Welcome to Living Harvest's Official Website and Online Store

The birth of Living Harvest is the story of a father and son in British Columbia, Canada, and how their quest for healthful living through whole foods led them to discover the nutritional benefits of nature's miracle plant - hemp. By launching Living Harvest, this entrepreneurial team has created not only a product, but a platform for educating people about the complete, balanced nutritional profile found in hemp seed.

Search for a Foundation Food™

In 1999, as a vegetarian working to improve his health with whole food nutrition, Charles Holmes sought the help of nutritional mentor and biochemist Dr. Michael O'Brien. O'Brien's tests revealed that, although Charles was relatively healthy, his body was still nutritionally imbalanced, protein deficient and lacking essential enzymes and amino acids that the body doesn't naturally produce.

Charles added rice protein to his diet in an effort to balance his body's systems, but it was not a nutritionally ideal solution. He was looking for a complete food that could supply the essential fatty acids and protein many vegetarians lack.

In 2001, Charles' father, Ken, was harvesting wild rice with a group of Native Americans near Flin Flon, Manitoba. Knowing Charles' interest in finding a foundational protein source, he became intrigued with the possibilities wild rice offered. Teaming up with Charles, Ken obtained a grant from the University of Saskatchewan Food Science Center to study improvements to the de-hulling processes for wild rice.

They Discovered Hemp Seed Protein

The Center's scientists encouraged Charles and Ken to also consider hemp as a possible high protein food source. At the time, no other company was using hemp seed protein for consumer products. It was considered a waste product and was used only as animal feed.

Ken and Charles learned that the hemp seed's balanced composition of essential fatty acids, essential amino acids and high protein gave them the ideal foundation food source they were seeking. The problem was, how to mill it. Hemp seeds were difficult to process without damaging their sensitive essential fatty acids. "We knew the protein could be made into a viable food product, we just had to figure out how", says Ken.

Ken, working with a fellow millwright from Saskatchewan, Canada, dedicated the next 18 months to engineering a specialized, proprietary milling machine. Their new vacuum friction mill processed the hemp seed at the low temperatures necessary to produce a whole, live food with enzymes and protein intact.

Establishing a Company

In 2002, Ken and Charles established Living Harvest Conscious Nutrition, Inc., with the goal of creating hemp seed products that maintain the seed's essential nutrients. With the application of their new technology, Living Harvest yielded the world's first organic, live, protein powder made from 100% Certified Organic Hemp Seed. The result was a protein powder with an unusually high protein concentration, over 46%. This proprietary process is still considered unique in the industry.

Today, we employ technologies such as Ken's proprietary vacuum friction mill, vacuum food dryers, and cold mechanical presses in the creation of a full line of organic hemp food products. We work in close partnership with the most respected organic farmers and farmer coops across Canada. Living Harvest was also the only company in the industry to have an exclusively organic line of products from day one.

We are, and will continue to be, committed to the Holmes family founding mission - to be purveyors of the finest quality, highest-nutritive, best-tasting organic hemp seed foods available.