Northern Rivers Hemp is an incorporated association made of local people who are passionate about hemp.
Each year at the Annual General Meeting an executive committee is elected. These people meet at least four times a year, currently more often and maintain the core functions of association and seek to realise it’s goals.
The Current Executive Group.
Andrew Kavasilas is the President of the Northern River Hemp Association and has been actively involved in NSW hemp farming since 1999. From pioneering hemp trials on the Liverpool Plains to acclimation and multiplication crops on macadamia orchards in the coastal regions of far north NSW.
He is the founder of Vitahemp Australia and has spent years identifying and breeding Low THC hemp cultivars to suit our sub tropical region. Vitahemp can supply licensed hemp growers with certified Low THC varieties, including proven varieties with no detectable trace of THC Delta 9.
Andrew’s primary interest is in the production of high quality hemp seed for human consumption. His work extends to the integration of hemp cultivars suited to the agricultural infrastructure used locally.
He can be contacted directly via email, [email protected] or telephone on .
Klara Marosszeky has been a licensed hemp grower since 1999.
She is currently working with the Ashford community in central western NSW to develop the region as a hemp growing area for NSW. She grew hemp there under commercial licence in 2010 and also trialled a dryland crop at Tatham in the Northern Rivers region. She has a strong interest in sustainable farming and a background in Landcare.
Klara has developed an affordable hemp lime building material for Australian conditions using local resources, with a goal to address social housing needs. The material is suited to both owner builder and commercial construction and uses simple monolithic design to construct thermally efficient, low carbon footprint homes.
Klara is currently a Program Manager for Ecologically Sustainable Initiatives for TAFE North Coast institute where she is also a teacher.
Deb Felton is a Founding Executive Member NRHA.
Deb is a Hemp grower. She is experimenting with varieties of NRHA seed. Including two successive generations of a Chinese landrace variety measuring THC variations and seed yields.
She is committed to ethical sustainable hemp growing, harvesting and production.
Her qualifications include RN NZ, BA Communications UTS, BA Law MACU, Grad Dip Education UCan, Cert IV Trainer, Masters Indigenous Studies Ginibi.
Kenrick Riley was among the first to get a licence to grow hemp commercially in NSW. He is currently growing certified organic hemp at his farm “Wiccawood” in Georgica, NSW.
Dr Keith Bolton is the founder and managing director of Ecotechnology Australia. Keith is best known for his role in the Byron Effluent Reuse Wetland where 750,000 trees were planted to manage Byron Bay’s sewage effluent and the North Coast Mop Crop Project which involved the irrigation of resource water (sewage effluent) on to a fibre crops such as hemp, bamboo and kenaf.
Keith is a leader in the development of ecotechnology in the rarefied innovative environment of the North Coast of Australia. He is Project Manager of the Centre for Ecotechnology at Southern Cross University.
He has a Bachelor of Agricultural Science and PhD in Environmental Engineering.
Guy Stewart has a passion for revitalising the bioregion’s capacity to meet it’s primary needs of healthy water, food, shelter, fuel & fibres and believes that hemp is unique in that it can help with all these. He provides the organisation with technical assistance, maintains the website and makes functional connections in the industry.
He has a Diploma in Permaculture.
He is a director in the executive committee.