The Grow-Off: Quantitative Cannabis Competition

We’ve been in the industry for 5+ years. In fact, we met through the industry. When we examined the Cannabis Cups, we grew tired of the hoopla. There was no rhyme or reason as to why one company would win and another would lose. With huge strides in lab testing over the past few years, we knew there had to be a better way. Editor’s Note: The Cannabis Cup is a competition regularly held by High Times Magazine. Criticisms have been leveled at High Times for lacking clear criteria and for the subjectivity involved in judging the competition. Past categories for winning include:

1. Best Medical Hybrid/Sativa/Indica Concentrates
2. Best Medical Hybrid/Sativa/Indica Flowers
3. Best CBD Flower/Concentrate/Edibles
4. And many more!

When you introduce new genetics to a grow, people are concerned about the clone’s cleanliness initially. You can’t put a price on a clean grow, so we had to earn the growers’ trust. Fortunately, Natural Remedies has a sterling reputation in the industry and there wasn’t a single issue. Editor’s Note: For most growing facilities, it is common practice to quarantine new plants in order to isolate any potential pests carried by the plant. Related Article: Integrated Pest Management

We hope to help the competitors better understand their systems and improve their processes so they can grow the best cannabis possible. We’re excited to see the data analysis our title sponsors at Grownetics will be putting together based on the weekly reports from our competitors.

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How are the final results publicly accessed? Top winners in each category (Potency, Flavor and Yield) will be celebrated across multiple media outlets. We also plan to discuss why these growers did better than the rest with the help of Grownetics. That’s the point of The Grow-Off: identify winners based on measurable results and educate the public as to why they’re doing better than the rest, while helping other competitors improve for next time.

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Will the winners be required to disclose any of their growing methods? They’re not required to, but we hope they don’t mind opening up about some of their processes. We’d never ask someone to put down their entire operation on paper and give it to their competition, because, in some cases, it’s their life’s work. We want to honor that while still helping move everyone forward.

We have cultivation facilities of all sizes competing and we’re excited to see how David stacks up against Goliath. On one hand, smaller operators are more flexible to focus on the competition plant, but the bigger guys have a larger staff and potentially more advanced systems. We’ll find out what worked best at the end of the competition!

Our lab partners at TEQ Analytical Labs test for overall cannabinoid and terpenoid profiles. We’re interested to see the differences coming from identical genetics and who can bring out unique traits. For yield, we want to see who can take one plant and get the most flower out of it, so they’ll report their final cured batch and hold it for inspection if required.

We wanted something really unique from Natural Remedies, as they’ve had some tremendous genetics projects in their nursery over the years. One of the bonuses in competing is that you get to introduce something new to your garden, and we wanted to make sure it wasn’t Blue Dream. No one needs more Blue Dream. No one.

There’s a huge push towards testing from all parties. States want to make sure the cannabis being sold is safe and accurately labeled. Growers want to improve how they cultivate, and objective metrics are better than merely smoking the product. Additionally, consumers want to know how potent every strain on the shelf is. We expect testing to become the rule rather than the exception.

Yes, that is the plan, but we need to identify states that have a larger quantity of licensed cultivators, rules in place for clone distribution, and registered labs. We’re as concerned with the scientific nature of the competition as we are with compliance. These are the 2 pillars of The Grow-Off, if you will.

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Currently, you only accept recreational growers. What about medicinal growers? We’re hoping to launch a medical competition next in Colorado and will be announcing that in the next few months.

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How many entries will you accept per state? That will depend on our genetics partner and how many clones they can make available to our competitors. Ideally we’ll never have less than 40 competitors in any one competition.

We hope to help cultivators understand how they stack up against others in their state and how to improve. Grownetics has a big hand in helping. Their current clients are seeing a 60% reduction in operating costs.