Cultivation
Climate change will affect where and how cannabis is grown
Cannabis growers are confronting the same issue that threatens to upend the wine industry and other agricultural-based businesses – shifting weather patterns and climate change.
Those shifts are forcing cannabis growers to rethink how to cultivate their plants.
Shorter growing cycles, for one, will help to ensure the growers can get their plants from seed to sale before disaster strikes by way of early freezes, fires or floods.
Another consideration for outdoor growers is that as climate change warms the planet, some cannabis strains will be better suited to places they have not typically grown.
For example, a recent study in the journal Earth and Space Science showed how parts of Colorado are becoming more arid because of climate-driven changes in stream flows and, over the coming decades, will look more like Arizona.
That could impact how both marijuana and hemp are grown in the future.
As another example, Climate Central, a New Jersey-based, independent organization of scientists and journalists researching and reporting on climate change, notes that as weather patterns shift, some wine regions might become too warm and dry for certain varieties of grapes.
“In the United States, the average growing season temperature (April-October) has risen 2.0°F since 1970,” Climate Central reported.
That could mean vineyards currently producing chardonnay might have to change to growing merlot grapes in the future, according to Climate Central.
The same trend could happen for outdoor cannabis growers.
Trying new genetics
“In the Northeast, we are seeing shorter, warmer winters, less snow, more rain, and it’s harder for us to predict what’s coming in the following seasons,” said Lauren Fortier, director of cultivation for Theory Wellness, a marijuana company based in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
According to Fortier, in the month of July 2021 alone, her cultivation operation received four times the amount of rain it usually gets in an entire year.
That’s pushing her to look at what cannabis strains and genetics will withstand high humidity and heavy rain.
“It’s possible to grow cannabis in any area of the planet,” Fortier said. “It’s a matter of working with fellow farmers and breeders and programs to tailor your genetics to where you’re at.”
For example, shorter-term genetics such as indicas or autoflower might work. She’s also trialing strains that are successful in cold, wet environments such as Maine and Washington state.
Fortier wants cultivars that will put on weight fast but still have heavy potency, cannabinoids and terpenes.
She believes another way to protect against potential crop loss, since her plants are primarily outdoor-grown, is to produce two harvests each year.
A proponent of living soil and sustainable growing methods, Fortier said: “I’m interested in long-term soil development and management so the soil can deal with a large amount of moisture or flood.”
She’s also experimenting with techniques such as hugelkultur, a cultivation technique that builds up a raised bed to help divert water if there’s a deluge of rain but also retain moisture in a drought.
Pathogens and autoflower
With changes in weather come different pests and pathogens.
“We see a different large pest pressure every year, it’s always in flux,” Fortier said.
She recommends growers watch out for the eggs of certain caterpillars, for example.
Fortier also suggests a farm include plants that help to bring in beneficial insects.
In places with warmer springs and windier conditions, pathogens such as powdery mildew are showing up much earlier, said Av Singh, cultivation expert at Nova Scotia-based Flemming & Singh Cannabis.
“Those are the challenges that happen when you get those environmental shifts,” he added.
To lessen the impact of those shifts, including early freezes, Singh advises breeders to aim for genetics that require fewer days from planting to harvest.
“Your best safety should be to have a shorter season,” he said.
To that end, autoflower cannabis with a 75-80-day grow period could be the future, according to Singh.
Although autoflower strains tend not to have terpene and cannabinoid content as rich as other types of cannabis, that’s where breeding comes in.
As breeders experiment with autoflower hybrids, the genetics should only improve.
He also pointed out that cannabis, an annual plant, has evolved in many environments and adapted to a wide spectrum of environments, more so than wine grapes as a perennial crop.
Ultimately, Singh said, growers should try to implement regenerative, organic principles in their cultivation operations to “mitigate those aspects of climate change.”
Learning from mistakes
Cannabis growers should learn from production agriculture when it comes to adapting to climate change, said Bryan McLaren, CEO and chair at Zoned Properties, a real estate development firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, that works with legalized cannabis.
“The cannabis industry as a whole needs to really learn the positive methodologies from industrial agriculture,” he added, including focusing on economy of scale while employing sustainable cultivation practices.
He pointed to how corn and wheat farmers were able to study genetics and improve the hardiness of their plants and, in turn, their yields many years before big, corporate agriculture firms took over seed production.
“(The cannabis industry) yields amazing economic returns and, if done right, hemp and marijuana has an amazing environmental regenerative opportunity.”
Bart Schaneman can be reached at bart.schaneman@mjbizdaily.com.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/climate-change-will-affect-where-and-how-cannabis-is-grown/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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