Globetrotting Hemp Farming Expert Doug Fine

Out in the Field

Entertaining author, journalist, goat herder,

Speaker, host, and regenerative living educator

To be featured on C-SPAN and at SXSW 2022

(LOS ANGELES) The main stops in hemp/regenerative living expert, author, and speaker Doug Fine’s adventurous life story are NYC suburbs, rural Alaska (where he almost became a ”Mountain Man”), and his current headquarters, his Funky Butte Ranch in New Mexico where he cultivates hemp and raises goats. His journey continues in 2022, with a session at SXSW in March as well as a keynote airing on C-SPAN in January.

But Fine’s timeline is dotted with many more stops due to a boundless energy and inquisitive mind that has shaped his identity as a climate change and regenerative living champion.

“When you go out into the world you experience that most people are kind and just want healthy families, ” Fine says, “you also discover magnitudes more than you do by just reading about the same situation.”

Fine began visiting Alaska in 1993, shortly after graduating from Stanford. He decided to move there in 1998, telling the New York Times he wanted “to live in a place truly wild.” This, after he spent part of that year learning the ins and outs of daily life from locals and expats on Guatemala’s Gringo Circuit.

Six years later, in 2004, Fine summited the famed Mount Kilimanjaro in the African republic of Tanzania. He and his group battled bitter cold, altitude sickness, fist-sized bees, stomach bugs, and sleep deprivation just to enjoy a natural high from Kilimanjaro’s rare perspective on the world.

While in Slovenia, 2014, Fine harvested hemp among the locals—doing it the old-fashioned way with a scythe instead of the more modern agricultural tools he uses on his ranch. That same year, Fine found himself in Vienna addressing the United Nations regarding the international drug war.

These are only a few of the stops on Fine’s endless ”Johnny Hempseed” journey to help teach the citizens of Earth how to heal the planet. Like any good quest, Fine’s is rife with adventure, comedy, drama, and personal growth. These experiences and their accompanying lessons—the ones he’s learned and the ones he’s given—only inspire him to get out more. To that end, Fine constantly books speaking engagements throughout the country and looks for new ways to spread the good word about hemp and regenerative living.

“Climate change mitgation through regenerative agriculture, including hemp farming, is the number one action everyone from Rwanda to Oregon can take to mitigate climate change for future generations.”

Acres USA – Learn Hemp Growing from Seed to Sales from Doug Fine

An accomplished journalist and author, Fine has given hundreds of keynote addresses, speeches, and interviews since releasing his first book, Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man, in 2004. Since then, he’s appeared on TV (Conan, The Tonight Show, CNN), given a TED talk (“Why We Need Goatherding in the Digital Age” at TEDxABQ), and even testified before the United Nations regarding “the right to farm whatever a farmer pleases.”

His December 8 session at the Acres USA Eco-Ag Conference and Trade Show in Cincinnati, will broadcast on C-SPAN in January, while his November virtual Hemp Panel that he led for Hawaii Farmer’s Union United can be seen here: youtu.be/tgcq79dkAWA

Already slated for 2022, Fine will appear at SXSW as part of their Climate Change Track. During the esteemed March conference, he will present a session titled, “What Anyone Can Do to Stablize Climate – Plant Hemp.” More details coming soon.

With his writing and speaking engagements, Fine is reaching people, and constantly finding new ways to do it. This includes American Hemp Farmer, an in-development TV docuseries based on his award-nominated book of the same name.

Fine seeds the series with all of the adventure, comedy, drama, and growth of his travels, making a compelling and entertaining case for hemp as a key part of the solution to climate change. And, with his trademark wit and wisdom, he teaches that the regenerative lifestyle isn’t beyond the average person. “If I can do it,” says the erstwhile suburbanite, “anyone can.”

So, in the series, Fine takes us along on his adventures, including an episode in which he travels to the Rosebud Sioux tribal lands, where he advises a Tribal enterprise on its organic hemp cultivation and harvest. Fine also visits George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate (manually harvesting in Colonial-style hemp clothes), and conducts virtual interviews with the researchers who will bring hemp food to the International Space Station.

Explaining the urgency that propels him, Fine writes in American Hemp Farmer that, ““We’re in the bottom of the ninth with two outs when it comes to tackling climate change and we’ve got a game plan: teaching it to everyone is my day job. And you’ve got to have fun along the way.” The Washington Post agrees, writing “Fine is a storyteller in the mold of Douglas Adams.”

Doug Fine is available for interviews and further speaking engagements in winter/spring 2022. A website of Fine’s print and radio work, United Nations testimony, television appearances and TED Talk is at dougfine.com. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @organiccowboy.

# # #