iHemp Hour: NoCo Expo, Southern Hemp Expo

Eric Steenstra and Morris Beegle are known to most in the industry. Their NoCo Expo and Southern Hemp Expo are models for successful hemp events. Here is a little more about each to get an idea of the involvement of these two in the industry.

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Morris Beegle

Entrepreneur: Marketing, Events and Trade Show Leader

Longtime entertainment industry and hemp entrepreneur Morris Beegle is founder of We Are for Better Alternatives (WAFBA), a multi-brand umbrella company and producer of NoCo Hemp Expo. After completing its fifth year, the NoCo Hemp Expo has emerged as the world’s largest industrial hemp conference and exposition, drawing thousands of visitors each year from throughout the world to Northern Colorado.

Based in Loveland, CO, Beegle’s company is involved in a wide range of industrial hemp-related enterprises, including Tree Free Hemp, a hemp paper and printing services provider; the Colorado Hemp Company, a hemp-centric marketing, media and event producer; and Let’s Talk Hemp, an education and advocacy platform integrating into conferences, festivals, and broadcast media channels. As a trusted leader in the industry, Morris has been a speaker on stages from coast to coast and upcoming appearances include Balkannabis in Greece and Expo East, MD.

Before dedicating his career in the industrial hemp and cannabis world, Beegle worked for over 25 years in the music and entertainment industry. During that time, he founded and served as President of Hapi Skratch Entertainment, a Fort Collins, CO-based production and promotion company that provided a multitude of services to recording labels and performing artists.

Morris is involved in numerous projects outside of WAFBA including music and production director for Realities Ride, the largest annual poker run event and kids-at-risk fundraiser on earth and participates in business advisory roles at the Hemp Business Journal,  HempToday.net, Hempstead Project H.E.A.R.T., and PureHemp Technology.

Eric Steenstra

Eric Steenstra is a hemp industry pioneer, co-founding hemp clothing and lifestyle brand Ecolution with Steve DeAngelo in 1992. Eric was a founding member of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) and served as Executive Director from 2008 to 2016. Eric now serves as the president of Vote Hemp, the political advocacy organization that he co-founded in 2000 and Vice President of the California Hemp Council. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and trusted source to the media, including CBS, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, Rolling Stone, Reuters and the Washington Post.

Vote Hemp lead the effort to pass hemp farming legislation nationwide. In 2005, Steenstra worked with Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) to draft the first modern U.S. hemp legislation introduced in Congress (H.R. 3037). In 2012 he worked with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to get companion hemp legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate (S. 3501). Steenstra worked with Congressman Polis (D-CO) and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) to have hemp legislation included in the 2014 Farm Bill. The 2014 Farm Bill authorized the first legal hemp farming in over 50 years and resulted in 78,176 acres of hemp being planted across 24 states in 2018. Vote Hemp also played an integral role in the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill including fully removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act.