Pot growers will need clean, consistent product
There’s a pioneer-like enthusiasm around the fast-approaching recreational legalization of marijuana in Canada, and with good reason. The now-legal cannabis business has quickly become a billion-dollar industry in places like Colorado, which recorded US$1.09 billion in adult-use sales in 2017, and California, which showed revenues of $339 million during its first two months of legalization.
Cannabis will be legal federally and across all provinces, giving the Canadian market more freedoms and fewer nuances than its southern neighbour, and providing huge advantages for rapid growth. As cultivators look to scale production to meet increased demand, the stakes get even higher to ensure consistency in quality and vigour of their crops.
The harm that pests and diseases pose to the health and wellness of crops is considerable. Nothing diminishes profits like a crop-devouring disease. Marijuana and hemp are highly susceptible to threats by insect, fungal and bacterial pathogens. This threat causes growers to use a multitude of pesticides, both legal and sometimes illegal, to produce the highest yields at the lowest cost possible. By doing so, they put themselves at risk for production problems, loss of efficiency, inconsistent product and recalls due to pesticide residue.
The need to get ahead of these issues and create a strong and stable supply chain will be imperative to cannabis-focused businesses in Canada. Front Range Biosciences, a Colorado-based agricultural biotech company specializing in tissue-cul- ture propagation of high-value crops through its Clean Stock program, is one of the firms working to provide cannabis growers with healthy plant starts through the supply chain.
While tissue culture has been used in other crops for decades, industry interest has been growing for industrial-scale, tissue-culture production processes for cannabis. By implementing tissue-culture propagation, cannabis producers can begin with stocks that are disease-free, pesticide-free and, true-to-type, ensuring plant consistency and more predictable growth.
Cannabis growers who don’t eliminate disease and pesticides from the start of their production process may lose portions of their harvest before it even has a chance to get to consumers. A single outbreak caused by pathogens in a medium-sized facility can cost an upward of $500,000 in lost product.
In 2015, more than 100,000 plants from six different facilities in Colorado were placed on hold due to the use of illegal pesticides. In 2017, 50 varietals were recalled in Colorado because they were found to contain unapproved pesticides. Incidents like these caused the state’s governor to issue a statement deeming any pesticide not approved for use a “threat to public safety.” Several customers sued.
As product becomes more available, discerning consumers will look for quality assurance and have a vested interest in knowing where their cannabis comes from. Unreliable and inconsistent strains will ultimately damage customer confidence and become harmful to a company’s bottom line.
Licensed producers (LPs) and investors who are positioning themselves to capture the demand that will come with Canada’s legalization will need to focus on efficiencies and getting ahead of issues that have impacted the industry to date. Starting with a clean slate makes it easier to end with one, essentially countering the “garbage-in, garbage-out” model by creating “gold-in, goldout” products that are built to thrive.
By investing in agricultural practices such as these, Canadian cannabis producers will have a solution for a problem that only increases in intensity as cultivators scale their operations. Forward-looking biotech companies have in hand solutions to a major hurdle that could be preventing Canada from being the world’s foremost producer of cannabis. Investors would be remiss to ignore tissue culture as a critical measure to ensure business is poised to succeed, with strong margins and efficiencies, from Day 1.
The scientific toolset to provide clean and consistent product has been available for other agricultural crops for decades. Now it’s available for cannabis.