Loco for NoCo
Thousands of hemp enthusiasts will gather in mid-April 2025 in northcentral Colorado for the country’s largest annual hemp event. I am excited to be one of them.
The Eleventh Northern Colorado Hemp Exposition and Conference (NoCo Hemp Expo) kicks off on April 10, 2025, in Estes Park, Colo., and runs through April 12, 2025.
This year’s three-day event, dubbed NoCo 11, continues the annual NoCo Hemp Expo series, which began on a small scale with a one-day gathering in 2014 in Windsor, Colo., and has significantly expanded since then to become what the organizers call the world’s “largest and most comprehensive hemp-centric trade show.” The expo brings together industry professionals, agricultural experts, policymakers, and innovators, along with members of academia, non-profit advocacy organizations, the media, and the public.
2025 marks the second consecutive year that Estes Park will host the NoCo Hemp Expo. It’s a resort town at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park, approximately 65 miles northwest of Denver by car. The previous expos iterations have taken place in other parts of northern Colorado, including Denver itself as well as Aurora (east of Denver), Colorado Springs (south of Denver), Loveland (north of Denver), and the aforementioned Windsor (north of Denver). I include a list of the NoCo Hemp Expos with their dates and locations at the end of this article.
NoCo 11 will be the third NoCo Hemp Expo I attend. My first one was NoCo 6 in 2019 in Denver, and then I was back again in Denver for the expo in 2021. (Click here for my 2021 write-up.)
I find these expos to be an all-you-can-eat information smorgasbord of all things hemp, which is federally legal cannabis. In fact, they offer so much useful input at any given time in terms of presentations and demonstrations and exhibitor booths to visit, that it is more than one person can simultaneously take in. I have returned from the expos with heaps of useful information and insights, not to mention piles of product samples and marketing materials and a renewed enthusiasm for the plant and the industry slowly maturing around it.
I think NoCo 11 will be no different based on the expo’s master schedule.
On day one of three, Thursday, April 10, 2025, the expo’s Policy, Regulations & Research Conference takes place. Giving the keynote address will be Beau Whitney, founder and chief economist of Whitney Economics. He is the one of the speakers whom I am most looking forward to hearing, as I find his hemp analysis articulate and compelling. He will discuss the uncertainty in the hemp market and its impact on growth.
There also will be a panel discussion at Thursday’s conference on the hemp-related priorities for the next federal farm bill, which Congress is expected to finalize in 2025. Hemp advocates anticipate that this legislation will remedy or alleviate issues that have impeded the fiber and grain sectors from growing to scale and the federal government from regulating the cannabinoid market for safe access by consumers.
Cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol (CBD) and delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9 THC), are chemical substances found in the hemp plant’s flowers, leaves, and stems. Research has shown that they have therapeutic effect, such as CBD lessening the severity of seizures and THC alleviating chronic pain. The presence of THC, which unlike CBD, can have a psychoactive effect when ingested in sufficient-enough amounts, is the reason that the federal government and state agencies closely monitor hemp cultivation.
There also will be conference presentations on Thursday on subjects including the status of hemp regulation in the U.S. states; hemp capital and finance; the future of hemp worldwide; international hemp markets and opportunities; and hemp policy and economic development among indigenous nations inside the United States.
On day two, Friday, April 11, 2025, will be the expo’s Food, Feed, Flower & Cannabinoids Conference. One of the highlights for me will be the panel providing an update on hemp’s use as an animal feed. Andrew Bish, chief operating officer of Bish Enterprises and president of the Hemp Feed Coalition, will be a speaker on this panel.
There will also be a talk on hemp seed and food innovation as well as panels on the next wave of hemp foods; advancing hemp genetics; protecting consumer access to CBD; the evolving hemp derivatives market; and the landscape of hemp legal disputes.
On the third and final day of the expo, Saturday, April 12, 2025, will be the Fiber, Machinery, Materials, & Environment Conference. It features a talk on why hemp is key to industrial sustainability and a fireside chat on sustainable eco-tourism. Also, Sergiy Kovalenkov, co-founder of Hempire, will present on using hemp-based materials to help to rebuid post-war Ukraine.
Plus, panel discussions will cover the next generation of hemp building materials; overcoming supply chain and infrastructure challenges; advancing hemp fiber- and hurd-processing technologies; the global market for hemp textiles; and industrial hemp in action worldwide.
On each of the expo’s three days, there also will be an Innovate Earth Symposium that runs concurrently to each of the respective conferences. The symposium will cover not only hemp topics such as advancing hemp research and education; hemp genetics research at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and optimizing hemp hurd for building applications. It also will delve into subjects like psilocybin therapy, cannabis psychedelics, and spiritual healing/relationships with plant medicine. I am looking forward to hearing long-time hemp advocate Paul Stanford present an historical overview of hemp on Thursday at the symposium.
Also, the expo’s exhibit hall opens on Friday and will be open on Saturday, too. At the time of publishing this article, more than 75 vendors and organizations were signed up. The exhibit hall will offer “a hands-on look at the full hemp supply chain,” according to the organizers. On display will be “raw hemp materials, farm and processing equipment, finished products, and innovations in textiles, building materials, biodegradable plastics and composites, food, supplements, and personal care items,” they state.
There, too, will be activities on the stage in the exhibit hall. Among them are a demonstration of building with hemp materials and decorticating hemp stalks (i.e., separating the outer, sinewy “bast” fiber from the stalk’s inner woody “hurd” material); a discussion of bio-based, non-toxic construction with hemp materials; an introduction to flowable hempcrete; and indigenous workshops, one of them with an associated panel. Among the presenters in the hemp construction session on Friday afternoon will be Cameron McIntosh, owner of the Pennsylvania-based Americhanvre Cast Hemp company. He is a pioneer in using hemp products such as hempcrete, which is a hurd-based insulative material (a.k.a. hemp-lime), in residential building projects the United States.
As part of the expo, there will be a cannabis film festival on the evening of Wednesday, April 9, 2025, and a post-expo wrap-up party on Saturday evening.
See you in Estes Park!
NoCo Hemp Expos 2014 to 2025
NoCo 1: April 5, 2014, Windsor, Colo.
NoCo 2: April 4, 2015, Loveland, Colo.
NoCo 3: April 1-2, 2016, Loveland
NoCo 4: March 31-April 1, 2017, Loveland
NoCo 5: April 6-7, 2018, Loveland
NoCo 6: March 29-30, 2019, Denver
NoCo 7: March 25-27, 2021, Denver
NoCo 8: March 24-26, 2022, Aurora, Colo.
NoCo 9: March 29-31, 2023, Colorado Springs, Colo.
NoCo 10: April 11-13, 2024, Estes Park, Colo.
NoCo 11: April 10-12, 2025, Estes Park
*In 2020, there was no in-person NoCo Hemp Expo due to COVID-19. Instead, the organizers held several online virtual events.
