During the course of the Great Legal Cannabis Experiment that’s taken place in Washington State over the last few years, much has been learned. People will waltz into stores and blissfully buy cannabis products, regardless of whether they’re $5 joints or elaborate chocolate fudge-filled edibles. The market fluctuates greatly, but, in spite of that, it also produces a great deal of tax revenue. And the competition for customers is fierce. The tooth-and-nail struggle for consumers and their cash has caused many cannabis careers to end abruptly, both in the retail side and the producer-processor side of business.

But why, exactly, do these businesses die off?

Depending on whom you ask, there are a number of reasons a business might fail:

1. Poor business decisions and/or a lack of experience.
2. Failure to comply with the regulations set and enforced by the state Liquor Control Board (LCB).
3. A lack of retailers or consumers to sell products to.
4. Or, perhaps, retailers lack the creativity think outside the box in their marketing.

To get a better picture of the situation, I spoke with some of the industry’s top professionals:

1. Jeremy Moberg, CEO-owner of Cannasol Farms
2. Shawn Denae, CEO of WA Bud Company
3. And Ian Eisenberg, founder and owner of Uncle Ike’s.

According to Jeremy Moberg, one of the large flaws in the industry boils down to overproduction: “The LCB is allowing over-production,” he said. “And doesn’t seem too keen on correcting it.”

While Moberg says he’s observed only a few dispensaries go under, he’s seen many growers go kaput. And once they do go under, their licenses aren’t dissolved. Rather, they’re sold to the highest bidder. This means that if a farm fails, production doesn’t necessarily stop.

“There needs to be attrition,” he says. “But until the LCB recognizes [that] they need to create a stable marketplace, I don't think we are going to see any change. We’ll continue to see the conglomeration of licenses.”

Moberg warns that without the proper regulations, the potentially lucrative cannabis business could soon become like the stagnant, subsidized corn industry. And while Moberg isn’t worried about his own business, which is in the top 100 of the 800 or so cannabis producers in Washington, he recognizes that the situation can be tenuous.

“If we had any sort of disaster,” he says, “it could be the end for us.”

Like Moberg, Denae thinks that the market was flooded too quickly with too many growers, setting many up to fail. While she says the LCB is “bending over backwards to keep dispensaries open,” growers aren’t so lucky.

In the initial stages of licensing, Washington was deluged by the number of applications. Cannabis prices were at an all-time high, and people wanted in. Once prices fell due to oversaturation of the market, many applicants quickly discovered that they weren’t able to run a business because the price per unit was way lower than what they expected.

But Denae has remained steadfast with her own farm. “Once your price goes down,” she says, “you can’t go back up - that’s a really hard thing to do. Out of desperation, people drop their prices just to make a sale, but they can’t make up the cost in volume.”

So, is there a magic wand solution? “Well,” she says, “it’s multifaceted.” One possible solution, she adds, might be to “allow [...] direct sales.” Wineries allow tours, tastings and sales on sight, Denae believes pot farms should be able to do the same. “That would really help,” she says.

On the other side of the counter, Eisenberg, perhaps Seattle’s most notorious retailer, believes dispensaries and growers fail for one underlying reason. “It’s [just] like anything else,” he says. “It you’re making t-shirts and you’re trying to get into Nordstrom’s, it’s not that easy. You have to stand out.” For Eisenberg, it boils down to “classic business 101,” which means market differentiation.

Additionally, when cannabis was legalized, many shops opened at the same time. “Imagine if you had 500 bars opening all at once,” Eisenberg offers, “you would have a high percentage of them closing around the same time, too.” When asked for a specific example, Eisenberg cites the recent case of the now-closed cannabis dispensary, Vela, which had a grower and extractor visibly attached to its dispensary like a brew pub might expose its equipment to patrons.

“Everyone thought that was novel,” says Eisenberg. “But then the customer went in once, saw it and no one cared. Vela hired a big retail consultant to try and reinvent the experience, they didn’t use words like ‘indica’ or ‘sativa,’ but instead they had a ‘mood chart.’ They gambled that soccer moms would like that.”

On the other hand, Eisenberg says his shop is successful because his “bud tenders are the best in the country.” He says he pays the highest wage and offers full medical benefits. He designed his business model to break even, not get rich. Like a slow burn rather than hoping to win the proverbial retail cannabis lottery. “I’m really old - I’ve worked all kinds of startups before this.” For Eisenberg, the best successes come from entrepreneurs that are versed in good business practices.

How does Eisenberg see both the retail and grower market evolving in the future? Well, it’s simple, of course. “Businesses that are good,” he says, “will do well. And the people who are barely hanging on will need to sharpen their pencils. It’s just like any other industry.”

Resources:

Want to get in touch with Jacob Uitti? He can be reached via the following methods:

1. Twitter: https://twitter.com/jakeuitti

In the first part of this series, we discussed the excessive energy consumption that occurs in the modern cannabis industry. More recently, however, the ecological impact of water consumption and sustainability has also arisen for the cannabis industry. Due to the fact that much of the cannabis industry’s origins date back to desert regions such as Israel, Afghanistan, and more recently, the Western US, the question of water consumption is on many minds, as both legislators and cultivators want to mitigate the effects of drought with sustainable water consumption practices.

Some believe that the answer to reducing the environmental impact of the cannabis industry is through legalization. Full legalization would grant the government the ability to regulate the industry as well as legally and economically incentivize producers to become more sustainable in their practices. Legalization would allow grant money for academic research and structural improvements, which are currently available for other agricultural commodities, to be offered to the cannabis industry.

Because the industry has been sorely lacking research, however, no one knows the exact impact that the industry has had and will have on the environment. In California’s case, legalization has become a key component to protecting the environment. California’s northern coast, frequently referred to as the "Emerald Triangle," has been plagued with illegal outdoor grows for decades, many of which have harmed entire ecological communities. These illegal grows are most commonly started on public land, where water is typically irrigated from surrounding bodies of water, such as streams. The runoff water and pesticides can be an ecological nightmare, as certain pesticides and fertilizers descend into larger bodies of water, while more stationary pesticides (such as rat poison) get consumed by animals that are in turn eaten by other animals.

In 2015, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife published a study detailing how cannabis grows in the Emerald Triangle average as much as 6 gallons of water per plant, per day. If you take that value and multiply it by the massive scale of California's grows, it becomes easy to see how, in a state plagued by drought, water consumption has become a headline issue. NORML disputes these numbers as a gross overestimate, as they have found that the average water consumption is closer to 2.6 gallons per plant per day. Unfortunately, because of the lack of research in this area, the actual water usage rate has yet to be determined.

With adult-use legalization in California came strict regulations and expectations for growers. Growers that pull from water sources such as rivers and streams will be held responsible for storing their own water supply. By requiring growers to maintain a regular water supply, consumption during the winter months will have a smaller impact, because water is scarcest in California during that time. Although some growers may only implement the minimum require to meet the regulations for initial inspections and licensure, the majority of growers are meeting, and exceeding regulatory demands. Outdoor cultivators, not just in California, are motivated to implement sustainable practices. Whether it be to meet regulations, lessen their environmental impact, or marketability, many cultivators are invested in their crops and want to be part of a cutting-edge industry that exceeds other comparable agricultural practices.

Indoor grows make water usage and wastage significantly easier to control:

1. Creative irrigation practices are reducing eliminating overwatering and reducing evaporation; there are also ways to recycle and reuse runoff water.
2. Cultivators are also collecting the condensation from humidity produced by transpiration and recycling it for use. Brandy Keen, co-founder and senior technical advisor at Surna, a company that creates water-efficient indoor cultivation equipment, boasts that indoor grows could be designed to have net-zero consumption.

As water-efficient practices are becoming more common, and consumers learn more about the environmental issues surrounding cannabis, cultivators are proactively seeking out new and improved watering methods.

Related Article: An Introduction to Closed-Loop Aquaponic Systems – Part 1 – Preparing for the Future

While the primary purpose of this series is to highlight the environmental footprint of the cannabis industry in the US, another takeaway should be that there is an overwhelming drive to improve, and that is a good thing. With improvement comes endless opportunities. The advancement of environmentally-sustainable practices have the potential to put cannabis above and beyond other agricultural businesses.

Resources:

Want to get in touch with Stephanie? She can be reached via the following methods:

1. Website: https://www.cannabistech.com/

Finding information on when grow lighting really began is not as easy as you might think because it crosses into the realm of science publishing, where content is jealously guarded by publishers behind paywalls so obnoxious that almost nothing can be gleaned from a scientific paper before it’s been purchased for the princely sum of $20 a time, and that’s before you know how useful it is. So our argumentative researchers scoured the internet and realized that finding a starting point was even more distressing: How about we just start at the beginning, when plants started growing in response to light?

This suggestion of course came after a few adult beverages had been consumed and is just daft: I mean hell, that means that the history of grow lighting stretches back some 4.6 billion years ago, with the accretion of our Sun followed by a slow period of a few hundred million years before the planets conglomerated. Then we need to add another “tiny” chunk of hundreds of millions of years before anything resembling life peeked its head above the primordial soup, let alone anything resembling photosynthesis.

We eventually settled on a logical approach: Look at artificial lighting and track its historical trajectory. Of course, all artificial lighting started by burning things such as oil, gas, etc., but it wasn’t until the invention of the electrical arc lamp (a big arc of controlled lightning under a glass cover) in the early in the early 1800’s that the first viable electrical street lighting existed. The early electric arc lamps were never successful due to how inefficient and expensive they were, but the concept of a contained lamp as we know them today really began. It was followed not long afterwards with the introduction of incandescent lighting in 1835 and James Bowman Lindsay’s demonstration of a “constant electric lamp” in Dundee, Scotland, nearly forty years prior to some bloke named Edison, even if Edison started throwing patents around, thereby garnering all credit for the invention.

Reads: Grove's Incandescent Lamp of 1840

The first recorded incident electrical lighting being used to grow plants, surprisingly enough, dates back to 1861 when a Frenchman called Hervé Mangon published a scientific paper titled: “Production de la matière verte des feuilles sous l'influence de la lumière électrique.” For those of you that can’t speak French this roughly translates as: “Production of the green matter of the leaves under the influence of electric light” and was published in “Mallet-Bachelier (editors), Weekly reports of the sessions of the Academy of Sciences in Paris.”

From the 1860’s onwards there was a steady stream of research into artificial illumination of plants. Researchers regularly tested plants under recently-developed lamps. These lamps were generally based on the three prevailing lighting technologies at the time:

1. Incandescent lighting spurred by the invention of Edison’s filament lamp in 1879.
2. Open arc lighting, as mentioned earlier, typically involved the use of carbon rods.
3. Gas discharge lamps, which have a long convoluted history stretching back to 1675.

Some of the earliest writings speculated upon indoor agriculture lighting’s commercial viability; “On the influence of electric light upon vegetation and certain physical properties involved” was produced by Carl Wilhelm Siemens (later knighted as Sir Charles William Siemens) and was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in 1880, where he also included an economic analysis of commercial production under electric light. The next 50-60 years of research and development were a frantic time in lighting technology, with numerous lighting technologies developing rapidly and our understanding of the basics of the electromagnetic spectrum and plant responses to it growing by leaps and bounds from the seeds of initial observations.

Author’s Note: Puns FULLY intended.

The earliest researchers used the oldest viable technology in carbon arc lamps, later moving on to incandescent and gas discharge technologies. Nevertheless, arc lamps were used extensively in research all the way into the 1940’s due to possessing a broader, bluish spectrum which also emitted high amounts of Ultraviolet light.

Incandescent lights were hugely important and also found their place; General Electric’s “Mazda” Tungsten Filament bulbs produced far more reds, infrared, and heat than other technologies at the time. Some clever nerds called J.M. Arthur & W.D. Stewart noticed that plants behaved oddly under this electric light; they discovered that elongated stem growth was caused by predominantly red spectra in their 1935 work “Relative growth and dry weight production of plant tissue under Mazda, Neon, Sodium and Mercury vapor lamps”. This research was conducted some 80 years before the vicious and bloody red/blue vs. full spectrum LED feuds of 2015 were fought across farmers forums everywhere on the internet.

This is how I picture internet wars.

Gas discharge lamps, the third of our trilogy of technologies, are even older than arc lamps and can trace their origins back to an observation by the French astronomer Jean-Felix Picard, who noticed that the empty space in his mercury barometer would glow as it moved when he was carrying it. Thirty years later, English scientist Francis Hauksbee demonstrated the first gas discharge lamp by electrically charging an evacuated glass globe containing a small amount of mercury. The system produced enough light that a person could read under it. This is, of course, was a far cry from the HID technologies of today and, in order to be accurate, we also need to turn to the father of the low pressure gas discharge tube for the closest facsimile to the lights we use today.

In 1857 a glassblower named Heinrich Geisser began constructing colorfully artistic cold cathode tubes using a mercury vapor pump that evacuated glass tubes to a level previously unattainable before filling them with noble gases which glowed different colors when a current was applied to them. He called them Geissler tubes and, in essence, they were the precursors to today’s neon lights. He also happened to design the basic principle behind today’s modern fluorescent lighting as well, aside from the fluorescent coating on the inside of the tube.

At this juncture it would be a fun detour to stop and tell you the amazing story of General Electric’s early twentieth-century douchebaggery, where they bought all of the patents for fluorescent technologies or sued the crap out of anyone who held any competing claims between 1927 and 1931, just to delay the rollout of fluorescent lights by some twenty years so. They didn’t want a more efficient technology to outcompete their older incandescent lights. As you can see, they fit the perfect example of how the lighting business is full of skullduggery. Sadly, we don’t have time the investigate this matter further, because we’re already over 1200 words and haven’t even dealt with High Intensity Discharge Lights yet!

Thus, we pause this history lesson for now. Part 2 will be with you at the same bat-time, same bat-channel soon.

Thanks
The ILUMINAR team.

Resources:

Want to get in touch with Iluminar? They can be reached via the following methods:

1. Website: https://www.iluminarlighting.com/
2. Email: sales@iluminarlighting.com

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is responsible for regulating cannabis cultivation in California. CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing is a division of the CDFA that handles the licensing and regulation of commercial marijuana cultivators. It also manages the track-and-trace system, which tracks cannabis from seed to sale. Currently, there are 690 adult-use cultivation licenses and 1,682 medical licenses in California according to the Cannabiz Media License Database.

There are several varieties of cultivation licenses in California, based on two things:

1. The type of lighting used: Indoor, outdoor, or mixed (tier 1 and tier 2)
2. The size of the cultivation facility, measured in plant number for small licenses and square footage for larger licenses

The table below provides details about each of these licenses by size.

Source: CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing

Of the 2,373 active cultivator licenses in the state at this time, small licenses are the most common by size, and mixed-use lighting licenses are the most common lighting type. Going even further, the chart below shows the number of specific licenses by cultivation type and lighting type:

License application fees vary from $135 for a specialty cottage outdoor license all the way up to $8,665 for a medium indoor license. Annual license fees also vary according to size and lighting. The annual fee for specialty cottage outdoor license is $1,205 while the annual fee for a medium indoor license is $77,905.

Related Article: California State Fees

Based on some calculations performed by Cannabiz Media, California will generate an estimated fee revenue (i.e., application fees plus license fees) of over $42 million, based on the 2,373 cultivation licenses tracked in the Cannabiz Media License Database.

An extreme concentration of cultivation licenses (77% of all licenses) in California are in just six counties: Santa Barbara (22%), Humboldt (20%), and Mendocino (14%), Monterey (11%), Calaveras (6%), and Los Angeles (5%).

Of the 58 counties in California, 31 have cultivation licenses, and 90% of those licenses are in just 10 counties: Santa Barbara, Humboldt, Medocino, Monterey, Calaveras, Los Angeles, Trinity (4%), Riverside (4%), Sacramento (2%), and Sonoma (2%).

The 2,372 cultivation licenses in the state are held by 1,206 owners. If we break ownership of the licenses down, we find that:

1. 833 license holders hold just one license each.
2. Twenty-four license holders hold 10 or more licenses.
3. One company holds over 100 licenses. That company is Central Coast Farmer’s Market Management, LLC.

Central Coast Farmer’s Market Management, LLC holds 113 cultivation licenses, which is 5% of all cultivation licenses in California. One of the company’s licenses is a medium mixed-light tier 1 license, one is a specialty mixed-light tier 1 license, one is a specialty indoor license, 23 are small outdoor licenses, and 87 are small mixed-light tier 1 licenses. Based on the license fees reported by the state, Central Coast Farmer’s Market Management, LLC pays $1.3 million in application fees and license fees for its 113 cultivation licenses.

While certain counties are hotbeds for cannabis cultivation and some companies are positioning themselves to be market leaders, other states are watching closely so that they can learn from the Golden State. At the same time, other companies are watching to see how they can get into the California marijuana industry and when the right time to do it is.

Would you like to read more about licenses in California? Stay tuned!

Resources:

1. Want to get in touch with Cannabiz Media? They can be reached via the following methods:
   1. Website: https://cannabiz.media/
   2. Phone: 203-653-7975
   3. Email: info@cannabiz.media

Regardless of what industry you work in, the safety of employees and products that are in transit is paramount. Cannabis transportation in particular requires the movement of very valuable cargo, including both inventory and cash. As a business grows, so too does the risk. Some companies elect to install mobile surveillance systems in company vehicles as a part of their more comprehensive security plan. Mobile surveillance gives business owners peace of mind when thousands of dollars worth of product and cash are in transit.

It’s pretty safe to assume that most people are familiar with camera surveillance systems. They’re practically a standard now, and are observable around buildings with high foot traffic, including banks, offices, stores, and schools. The cameras you see mounted in and around buildings are all connected to a recording device, typically a station where security personnel can review the image feeds. It’s not all that different for a moving vehicle; cameras are placed on the exterior, the driver's cabin, the cargo area, and connected to a recorder. However, the mobile environment presents unique challenges that stationary systems likely won’t face. Driving a vehicle down a normal road induces a huge amount of vibration, kicking up dust, mud, water, and anything else that the environment throws at you that day. The cameras and their associated equipment must withstand these conditions, and maintain clear and useful images.

Typical mobile surveillance cameras are specially constructed in housings that are built to endure the location they’re installed in. Cameras intended for use on the outside of the vehicle are built with water-tight seals to resist the weather, while interior cameras are designed to be more compact. Both interior and exterior cameras have built-in microphones for audio recording. Most importantly, however, is the recorder. When these are installed in a vehicle, they are built to endure extreme shocks and vibrations. Mobile recorders are often housed in shock and vibration-resistant housings, using solid-state recording media (solid state drives or simple SD cards) that can handle higher G forces. The system is powered by the vehicle ignition, for hands-free operation that alleviates the potential for human error.

The effects of these cameras are twofold:

1. They create accountability, encouraging drivers to perform at their best. Psychology studies have shown that when people believe they are being watched, they tend to behave more appropriately.
2. They exonerate wrong-doings, such as when anyone makes a false claim. The advent of body cameras for police officers has helped many to clear their names.

With views on the road and inside the delivery truck, you can see the road conditions, how other drivers are behaving, and how your driver reacts to them. You can use this information to coach your drivers on how to improve, or train new hires. If and when an accident happens, you’ll have irrefutable, hard evidence that you can take to court should the need arise.

Watch as product is first loaded into the truck all the way to when it arrives at its destination. Cargo area cameras keep an eye on all of your valuable goods and who is handling them. Many mobile recorders, including Safety Vision’s, also record timestamps and GPS coordinates. You’ll be able to see exact departure and arrival times, and see the precise route that was taken, including any authorized (or unauthorized) stops. With enough cameras, you can capture the entire story, and can even improve your training materials for new hires.

Ever have the sensation that you’re being watched? Ever behaved a little differently because of it? When everyone knows they’re being observed, theft and other crimes diminish. For many business owners, it might seem counterintuitive to have highly visible cameras; you might think that you want the cameras hidden or otherwise inconspicuous because you don’t want people to know you’re watching.

In reality you want the cameras to be as visible as possible! Criminals will think twice about hijacking a shipment or attacking an employee, and your employees can work with confidence knowing that there is a visible record of events being created. An additional “panic button” should be made available near their seat so that if a dangerous situation occurs, a distress call can be sent to someone in real time, potentially saving a life.

Most of this discussion has been about hardware, but some of the coolest innovations in mobile security have come in the form of software. GPS tracking, live video streaming, and custom email alerts are some of the hottest requests made by fleet operators.

The benefits these features are obvious. You can set up a geo-fence that defines an area or route that a vehicle is authorized to operate in; when a vehicle leaves that area, an email alert is sent automatically and directly to the operator. You can monitor idle time, set up alerts for when the vehicle departs or arrives at the dispensary, or receive notifications if the panic button is pressed. With live streaming, you can then view any camera on the vehicle to see exactly what is happening from your computer, tablet or phone.

To learn more about how Safety Vision is helping to keep cannabis inventory secure throughout any and all stages of its transportation, visit www.safetyvision.com/cannabis.

Resources:

Want to get in touch with Safety Vision? They can be reached via the following methods:

1. Website: http://www.safetyvision.com/
2. Email: email@safetyvision.com
3. Phone: 1-877-925-4344