Today we’d like to introduce you to Iginia Boccalandro.
Hi Iginia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I have been a competitive athlete my whole life competing in many sports. The injuries along the way to two Olympic games have been many. My knee pain and inflammation led me to use cannabis but it was not until 2012 that Bill Althouse introduced me to CBD. I saw his miraculous return to health from a broken back without any other lifestyle changes with CBD. It intrigued me so I began using it regularly.
The introduction to CBD was life-changing. The pain relief and the reduction of swelling made me more active and happier. In addition to noticing better sleep and less stress as well. All of that without the negative effects of THC like lost keys, inability to concentrate, and munchies made it that much better. Getting involved with hemp early on has made me witness the huge amount of lies, misinformation, and frankly lack of professionalism in this field.
The amount of greed and the lack of character of the first companies up and running was astounding. The proliferation of shady products, toxic production, and lack of food safety regulations has compounded the original problem. Our overall mission to help small organic farmers create more revenue to be able to continue to exist has been our guiding light. Our purity standards, and our ethical, environmental, and our sustainable practices for growing hemp and formulating our products are not the same as others. Those standards have remained the same regardless of what the rest of the industry is doing.
We are certified USDA Organic and pride ourselves in handling our plants with love and care: by hand. We have no machines involved in harvesting our plants. There is simply NO: dragging plants on the ground to pile into a truck while the plants compost in the anaerobic conditions before being decarboxylated in big ovens laden with petroleum fumes and then extracted with butane and/or hexane. We do not make claims nor do we hide what we do. Instead, our farm and kitchen are open to friends and volunteers to learn and experience everything we do.
All products have batch numbers that can be traced to a third-party lab allowing our customers to verify how much CBD and THC are in the product along with the presence of anything harmful. We have a Food Processing License, use a commercial kitchen, and sanitize jars along with bottling at 250 degrees F to protect our customers. We have also spent more than seven years conducting genomic selection to protect our farmers from legal consequences for having plants that go over the THC legal limit.
We have the first CBD plant ever granted AOSCA certification and clean plant certification with the USDA. We are now also deeply involved in the different uses of hemp in the USA. We are currently spearheading using hemp as an alternative energy source. Bill Althouse, our lead farmer, is on a bunch of Boards to bring hemp up to standards in the building, energy, textile, and food industries to mention a few.
In 2011 I founded the Carbon Economy Series a 501 (C) 3 to teach sustainability on college campuses. We taught over 25 one and two-day workshops on 7 different college campuses. My biggest concern has always been the air we breathe. The severe climate change conditions and the overall imbalance in our atmosphere put humans and all lives at risk. Our current and most ambitious goal is to get the USA to be the FIST carbon-neutral country. The growing of hemp goes hand in hand with this the tremendous amounts of money available from the Federal government to mitigate climate change. This initiative has me very excited and extremely busy.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have been great challenges along the entire way. Hemp has so huge stigma given the connection to marijuana. Unfortunately, there is inordinate greed and inordinate fear associated with hemp which makes it like the Wild West.
Anything and all goes without consideration to the triple bottom line. We have had to tighten our belts and go through financial duress to be able to stay committed to that standard: that which is good for people, good for the planet, and good to make a profit so we have enough yield to invest in our future.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about the Fat Pig Society?
We are organized as a worker cooperative which means we have shared ownership and operate an organic hemp farm. Each member has the same vote and is required to participate in the operation of the business.
Cooperatives have seven guiding principles which are: Open and Voluntary Membership, Democratic Member Control, Members’ Economic Participation, Autonomy, and Independence, Education, Training, and Information, Cooperation Among Cooperatives, and Concern for the Community. We are vertically integrated to control quality and cut costs to give our customers better pricing. We do everything: cloning, growing, meeting organic standards, harvesting, drying, curing, extracting CBD oil, bottling, and formulating all of our products.
Our brand Fat Pig Society stands for quality, purity, sustainability, and fair trade. We are here to help all organic farmers in Colorado supplement their income with one or two acres of hemp. We market directly to our customers; from our farm to you. This insures that the farmer makes more revenue than the existing system where the farmers get 1 to 5 cents from every dollar.
In our cooperative, the farmer makes 80% of every dollar and has control of the quality of all our products. Having no investors, no distributors, no wholesale buyers, no retailers, no managers or highly paid executives allows us to provide a high-quality product for much less money. We donate 10% of our production to people that cannot afford CBD. These may be single mothers, cancer patients, and all kinds of groups of people who are marginalized and under duress.
In addition, we also open our doors to interns who want to learn more and volunteers who want to get CBD in exchange for their help. We want our customers to know that they are directly impacting the life of organic farmers in Colorado when they buy from us. We want them to know that they can be sure that they are getting the highest quality CBD for the best price possible. We will continue to find ways to make it more affordable for all people and have dropped the price each time we innovate and get better at our craft.
We have a strong educational component and are always ready to share it with others. We have operated as a business incubator helping others with their start-ups and with private labeling. In addition, we give clones to organic farmers with no initial cost upfront, transferring our knowledge for free, with additional help in the extraction of CBD oil, marketing, and product development.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Being cause-oriented, hard work, and too stupid to quit.
Pricing:
- Full Spectrum CBD $0.08-$0.10 per mg
- Organic Clones for $3-$5 each
- $55 for CBD Facial Oil with 100 mg of CBD
- $60 for Healthy Gummies with 600 mg of CBD
- $12 CBD Soothing Sensations baths
Contact Info:
- Website: fatpigsociety.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fat_pig_society/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fatpigsociety
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@acoopmember2222
Image Credits
Victoria Cachero
