ASHEBORO, NC--- Four years after North Carolina legalized the production and sale of industrial hemp; Founder's Hemp in Asheboro is seeing great growth.

Bob Crumley is the owner of Founder's Hemp, he says a lot has changed after coming from the very first meeting with the commissioner of agriculture in 2014, early 2015 to now.

"Seeing a field like this growing in North Carolina and knowing what this product is going to do for people in this state is pretty cool," Crumley said.

Crumley says in 2018, the company lost 30 to 50 percent of their crops in their last harvest due to Hurricane Florence and the floods it brought to the area.

"We were just cutting everything down as fast as we could cut it because the hurricane was coming in, but this year we can select cut, go through the field multiple times and really let the plants have the opportunity to provide the best hemp they can provide."

The company planted 1,500 hemp plants per acre just on this one farm in Asheboro, and they normally predict around 1,000 will survive, but this year it flourished beyond their expectations.

Not only is the business helping North Carolinians through the product, but it's also saving family farms; that's according to Crumley. Company director of farming, Waylon Saunders, has been farming for the last 10 years. Before he started platning hemp, he was growing soy beans, corn and raising organic chickens.

"It's not like any other crop I've ever grown, it's really not. It's a lot harder but it is amazing to watch them grow. It's endless with the products you can create from hemp; it's just so much stuff you can use it for," Saunders said.

The company makes beauty and health products, snacks and CBD oils.

"We are in the right place for hemp to grow and it will be a very substantial crop, and already is but it'll be even bigger in North Carolina as time goes on," Crumley said.