Meet the People Behind Green Remedy, John Salsman

There are many incredible people who work very hard to make Green Remedy a successful company. Every individual on our team is proud to provide a safe, natural product capable of helping consumers with a variety of issues they experience. We believe it is important to go behind the scenes and recognize some of these stories about our staff in order to help customers learn more about us. 

Each month moving forward, our online journal will begin to introduce a new member of the Green Remedy family. Because this is our first month, it makes sense to start at the top of our organization. Although you might have heard of him in the past, or even met him in person, our founder and owner John Salsman, is someone who is definitely worth getting to know a little bit better. He has done a great deal to help so many others, but this is an opportunity to share more about his background and the history that helped him develop Green Remedy CBD to the point we are at today. 

Family History and Background

John Salsman’s family has been involved with farming for nearly a century. His father was a 4th generation farmer who witnessed the industry undergo a lot of changes. He spoke to John about the difficulty families faced that were attempting to earn a living from local farms. These challenges would eventually lead his father toward a career in heavy highway construction. He stopped farming altogether for a time during the 1950s and 60s. However, he would later begin a cattle farm during the 1970s. 

Farming had always been a family business for John Salsman and his brothers. But after witnessing the difficulties discussed by their father, they decided to open a heavy highway construction company in 2001. The company was located in Tennessee but John began building bridges through Kentucky. He would eventually establish a home in the Commonwealth. 

After working with his brothers on the construction company for over a decade, he learned a lot about managing major projects involving machinery, investment, and teams of personnel. His projects and family history in the farm industry also led him to continue to explore the economic challenges facing families in the region. It became apparent to John that farmers in Kentucky needed other means to help improve their income in order to help their business and families. This led him to begin research on emerging crops such as hemp.  

 The Early Years of Green Remedy

John’s interest in the hemp industry’s ability to help farmers and develop economic impact in the region led him to begin Green Remedy in 2014. The hemp industry faced heavy scrutiny and legal restraints during this time in the United States. But John remembers 2015 was a turning point for him and the company. During this year he traveled to the World Hemp Conference where researchers from many different countries talked about a variety of issues that would inspire Green Remedy for years to come. 

During the conference, John remembers one presentation that highlighted Kentucky as one of the three best places in the world to grow hemp. The other two locations mentioned are located in China and the Ukraine. John combined this knowledge with his interest in the struggles facing Kentucky farmers. He met with Stephen Lutz, an eighth generation dairy farmer who serves as Green Remedy’s Farm Operation Director. Stephen recently lost his a large portion of his farm’s dairy production and was eager to combine John’s passion with his own. Working together, John and Stephn realized hemp could be used to replace and overcome the losses many farmers were experiencing. 

Green Remedy Today

During the last five years, John worked very hard to put a large emphasis on research and development at Green Remedy. He believes a major strength of the company is the high quality genetics in the plants. This helps Green Remedy produce different plants during different times of the year that are capable of achieving optimal growth based on the unique climate in Kentucky. 

“We want to give each farmer a big chance for success,” said Salsman. “To do that, we knew it would be just as important to work at the genetics as it would be to work on the farm.”

In addition to his work with farmers and scientists, John is also a big advocate for the 2018 farm bill, officially part of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. In many ways, this helped open doors for John Salsman’s goals with Green Remedy to finally come to fruition. Not only did the act allow for more open sales of CBD products but it is also helping fuel further applications to develop. An influx of new products that include CBD and hemp are helping Green Remedy to grow. This growth has allowed John to add many key personnel to the Green Remedy team while ramping up production on the farms.