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When breeders introduce a new plant in ornamental horticulture, it typically comes with detailed instructions on how to grow that plant at scale successfully. In commercial cannabis, cultivators are often writing the book as they go, incorporating lessons they learn along the way.
Cannabis Business Times talked with four commercial cultivation pros willing to share their most important cultivation-related lessons. Interestingly, many of these lessons focus as much on people as on the plants they grow.
Photo courtesy Glass House Brands Inc.
GRAHAM FARRAR, President at Glass House Brands Inc., a vertically integrated, California-focused cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and retailing business.
Farrar’s first grow was a 6-square-foot closet. Now it’s roughly 3 million square feet. “People say, oh, it’s a weed, it grows easy. Well, it grows easy as long as you don’t care if it’s consistent or good or you did it efficiently. Now, if you want to consistently grow quality at scale, that is not easy,” Farrar says.
1. Passion and grit are necessities. “The thread through [my career] is you’ve got to be passionate. There’s no substitute for that. It’s really hard to be good at something you don’t love. You’ve got to be gritty. … In cannabis, insurance, payroll, bank accounts, credit—all these things become projects in their own right. So you have to be immensely gritty. … Cannabis is not an industry for tourists. Cultivation is hard. Farming is hard. Cannabis makes it 10 times harder. It’s hard to be a successful strawberry farmer. It’s 10 times harder to be a successful cannabis farmer.”
2. Focus on quality, consistency and cost. “If you’re trying to do anything commercially at scale, my mantra has always been quality, consistency and cost. First, you got to do it great, then you got to do it great every time, then you got to do it great every time efficiently. Our goal at Glass House is to grow the most, best weed for the best value. So we want the weed to be good; we want to be scalable, so that everyone can get it; and we want it to be affordable enough that they can all have access to it. I think that applies to everybody—quality, consistency, cost—and the way you do that is as a team.”
3. Be the better team. “We have a phenomenal greenhouse. But if you said, ‘Hey, you can have the Glass House team at a different farm, or you can have the Glass House farm with a different team,’ I would take the Glass House team 1,000 times out of 1,000. … You will never find us resting on our laurels. We’re in a race with ourselves to continue to improve. Because we know if somebody out there gets a better team, the fact that we have the unicorn farm is not going to stop them. My approach has always been to marry cannabis experience and agricultural experience.”
4. Get better every day. “One of my mantras is ‘new mistakes only.’ We’re doing things no one’s ever done, so we’re going to make them. But when we make a mistake, let it be the lesson that keeps you from making that same mistake again. … There’s no such thing as perfect in agriculture, so you’ve got to enjoy the journey, because the destination is actually unattainable. But continuous, incremental improvement is probably the most important thing. … In this case, it’s every day. You’re not going to get 100% better, but you can get 1% better every day. So 100 days from now, you are 100% better. And I think it’s that kind of mentality.”
Photo courtesy SunMed Growers
BRAD MORAN, Director of Operations at SunMed Growers, a Maryland-based greenhouse cultivation operation.
Moran came into cannabis cultivation from the ornamental nursery industry. Along with other responsibilities, he now oversees the cultivation team and an approximately 300,000-square-foot grow at SunMed Growers, Maryland’s largest cannabis producer.
5. Keep an eye on the human element. “You need to surround yourself with good people, the right people. Then identify individual strengths that you’re surrounding yourself with and allow them to flourish. Allow them to succeed and grow. As growers, we really get caught up in the plant itself. … But there’s a huge number of people that touch things. It took me a while to realize that. You water a plant, you give it food, you give it light, and the thing grows, and it should grow like this, and you hit these benchmarks. But the human element is a little different, so it’s important to have your eye on that as well.”
6. Trust your inner voice. “Don’t take anyone’s opinions or sales pitch as the gospel, especially in the cannabis industry. As infant as it is, in a professional realm, there are a billion different people out there that will proclaim, testify, whatever, that this is the way it works, and this is the way you have to do it. I think that the good cultivators out there, the good growers, they need to trust themselves. They need to listen to their own inner voice.”
7. Develop relationships with like-minded people. “It’s important for cultivators to develop their own groups and channels of people that they trust and that are like-minded. If you don’t have that within your organization, it’s really good to have a like-minded, trusted individual that you can bounce ideas off. They don’t come easy—years of kicking things back and forth and trusting one another. I think the majority of that circle or group needs to be in the [cannabis] industry. But certainly there’s benefit to having somebody that’s outside the industry. I just have that because I’ve come through that, I’ve been there.”
8. Keep it simple. “There’s a lot of different ways to get to the same desired end. The more you can simplify it, the better you’re going to be at what you’re trying to do. If you’re simplifying things, you can really focus on the accuracy and the timeliness of the things that you’re trying to get done, instead of getting lost in the minutia. … Just because it is more complicated doesn’t mean that it’s better. We’re always looking for ways to get the job done that are easy and digestible for our staff, that are repeatable, and that they can execute every time. There’s a lot of unnecessary work done sometimes to get to the same end.”
9. Always keep looking forward. “You can always look at a process and review it and make sure that you’re doing it efficiently and the best way—any process, big or small. And continue to try and trial different things. … We’ve tried a bunch of new different things. Some have panned out. Some haven’t panned out. In continuing to look at new technology and trialing new things, don’t get in over your head. Pick one thing at a time. But you always got to be looking forward and trying to figure out what’s next or what maybe you don’t know.”
Photo courtesy Leslie Mortland
Lessons from …
LESLIE MORTLAND, who at the time of this interview was Cultivation Manager at Jushi Holdings Inc., a vertically integrated national, multistate operator with cultivation, manufacturing, processing and retail operations.
Mortland entered the cannabis industry five years ago from a business and administrative background. Mortland joined Jushi, where she oversaw 35,000 square feet of canopy, after gaining cultivation experience at several cannabis companies, including Cresco Labs.
10. Bridge the cultural gap. “There’s a culture clash that happens between corporate business and people that have worked in the underground industry for a long time. Sometimes companies don’t always know how to address that, or try to just kind of sidestep it. … When you’re trying to pull from people with a lot of experience, it’s really hard to be successful without thinking about where they’re coming from and shaping some of the training that you’re providing based off different lived experiences.”
11. Understand the real cost of turnover. “Sometimes entry-level positions [in cannabis cultivation] are treated more like how you hire in retail—like they’re expendable positions. But the cost of turnover in the industry is extremely high. … There’s a lot of value to having somebody who can deleaf a plant really fast. Treating that person like they’re replaceable when it took us six months to get them up to a pace where they’re helping us make money and not lose money, there’s a lot of invisible cost with that.”
12. Work from a data standpoint. “There’s still a lot to be learned about the plant that we’re working on right now. It’s very hard when you’re seeing failure in one area, not to just immediately try something new. There’s a lot of value in structuring the way you’re approaching collecting data to be able to make smart, concise, fine-tuning decisions that aren’t as drastic. … Approach problems in an analytical sense, where you’re collecting information, you’re looking at results again, analyzing data, and going from a data standpoint about equipment changes, personnel changes, all of it.”
Photo courtesy Bostica
MATT PARKER, Director of Cultivation at Bostica, a Massachusetts cultivation operation.
Parker came into the cannabis industry a decade ago and accumulated lessons at different grows on his journey. Today he oversees the cultivation team and a 35,000-square-foot canopy in Bostica’s multitier facility.
13. Staff based on average performance. “Sometimes people might prescribe a certain amount of people per square foot of canopy, based on what a ‘really efficient’ facility or a ‘really efficient’ worker can cover. My advice would be to not think in terms of what the most optimal scenario would be—like an all-star employee who’s really skilled at plant work. Try to think more of what your average hire might bring to the table. That would really be the key component.”
14. Don’t try and run too lean. “Sometimes people try to operate lean or with fewer people. That can cost you more in the long run. If you fall behind on manual labor, like plant work, then you can end up with issues like powdery mildew or bud mold due to improper air flow. … When you don’t properly defoliate, you can end up with a lot of leaves that we refer to as ‘sinks’ instead of ‘sources’ of energy. When you have leaves that are getting the adequate amount of light, they’re absorbing a lot of energy and are a source. If leaves are not getting enough light, they actually end up weighing down the plant. … When you’re doing one tier, air flow is a little bit easier to manage. But when you’re doing two tiers, trying to get the proper air flow becomes a little more difficult. Defoliation is really important in that scenario.”
15. Take time to find proven genetics. “Proven genetics are cultivars that people have bred and selected as winners. So the information is there on what kind of TAC [total active cannabinoids] levels or THC levels those genetics bring to the table, and also what yields those particular genetics bring. When you find what one may call proven genetics, you know what you’re dealing with, and that’s one less unknown variable at play. … When the higher THC stuff is selling much faster, acquiring genetics that you know have a high THC percentage is obviously very important to the business model versus starting with an unknown.”
16. Understand the weight of cultivation variables. “It’s important to understand the weight of each cultivation variable. For example, light intensity, feed, EC [electrical conductivity, a measure of nutrient concentration] and CO2, and how important each one of those is. You need to understand the weight of each variable and how they affect each other. You can end up in a scenario where you have a ton of CO2, you’re feeding the plant high EC, you think your light intensity is enough. But if it’s not enough, that can break down what you’re doing. … It has become more standardized for items like light intensity, EC levels in your feed, CO2 levels. However, dealing from cultivar to cultivar, that’s where the grower has an opportunity to make adjustments with those items, varying from the standard.”
17. Embrace user-friendly tech. “If there’s a way you can monitor something, do it. Like light intensity, like your substrate water content and/or EC level, like your runoff—monitoring all of these is so key. Because as soon as you’re not monitoring one of them and you have an issue, you don’t know if that one item could be causing you problems. … Embrace the AI. Embrace the technology. With that said, the systems that you put in place—whether it’s an irrigation system, whether it’s an environmental system and or the controls for those systems—definitely take the time to invest in or acquire the ones that are the most user-friendly. That’s going to be your key to success, especially in an industry that’s considered high turnover, so someone you bring on board can operate these systems.”
Jolene Hansen is an award-winning freelance writer and editor specializing in the commercial horticulture, cannabis and CEA industries. Reach her at [email protected].
