It all begins with a passion.
That’s the message Mike Fata, a Manitoba hemp entrepreneur, has for anyone starting a specialty food business – follow your passion and money will follow.
“Our business is everything that we do,” said Fata, president and co-founder of Manitoba Harvest, a hemp food company based in Winnipeg.
“It’s more of a lifestyle than a business. It’s not about the money.”
That mission statement has worked for Fata and his partners, as Manitoba Harvest expects to sell $6 million of hemp food and oil this year, which includes sales to clients in Europe, Australia and Japan.
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In the last five years, the company’s sales have grown to $2.5 million in 2006 from $490,000 in 2001. That makes Manitoba Harvest one of the fastest growing businesses in Canada.
In 2007, the company introduced a new product; Hemp Bliss organic hemp milk as an alternative to dairy, soy and rice milk. The milk, made with the oil from hemp seeds, has been a hit with organic retailers and last fall it won the best new product award at the Natural Products Expo in Baltimore, the largest organic trade show in North America.
Mainstream grocers are also picking up the milk, sold in vanilla, chocolate and original flavours. It is available at Superstores and will soon be sold at Sobeys.
Fata also hoped to line up more hemp milk distributors at an organic trade show in Nuremberg, Germany.
That show will mark the start of a busy 2008 for Manitoba Harvest. It plans to open a new plant in Winnipeg to process hemp seed oil, hemp seed nut butter and a protein powder.
A surge of consumer interest means more demand for hemp acres on the Prairies.
Art Potoroka, who farms 70 kilometres northwest of Dauphin, has grown 200 to 400 acres of hemp on his 3,000 acre farm for years.
“I started growing hemp in 1998 and I’ve been growing it every year since,” he said.
“Hemp will grow pretty well anywhere,” he said. “The one thing it will not tolerate is wet feet …. Other than that, it’s a vigorous crop. You don’t need to use any chemicals on it.”
Potoroka added that hemp is fertilized similar to canola and harvest has become easier.
“We straight combine it … and the newest combines really need no modifications.”
However, he said he did modify his John Deere in the feeder house, and replaced a chain with a belt.
He said a typical yield would be 500 pounds per acre, but he knows of a producer who got 1,500 lb. per acre. Hemp sells for about 50 cents per lb.
“This area here is sort of the hemp capital of Canada,” he said, adding there are more than 20 hemp producers in the Ethelbert region.
Fata said that most growers live in Manitoba, but there are some in Saskatchewan who produce organic hemp seeds for Manitoba Harvest.
“We’re working with about 30 producers and we’re constantly getting calls from people that are interested (in growing hemp),” said Fata, 31, who started Manitoba Harvest with Martin Moravcik and Alex Chwaiewsky in 1998.
