Futuristic agriculture
Fish are helping to fuel bumper cannabis crops for a Canadian producer, reports Susan Taylor ,of Reuters.
AN unlikely combination of freshwater fish and cannabis is producing outsized medical marijuana crops that a Canadian company hopes will lead to a stock market listing and global expansion. Green Relief’s aquaponic farm uses filtered fish waste to fertilise cannabis plants, which in turn clean the water for the fish.
THE unlikely combination of freshwater fish and cannabis is producing outsized medical marijuana crops that Green Relief Inc aims to capitalise on, as the Canadian company plots a stock market listing and global expansion.
In an underground southern Ontario facility surrounded by farmland, Green Relief operates a cuttingedge aquaponic farm, using filtered fish waste to fertilise cannabis plants, which in turn clean the water for the fish.
The company says it is the world’s only licensed producer to grow medical marijuana this way, a pesticidefree process that took two and ahalf years to fine tune. The only signs of this operation, which is built into a hill and insulated by about a metre of dirt and grass, is aboveground ventilation equipment sticking out of the ground.
‘‘This is the agriculture of the future,’’ said Warren Bravo, a former concrete contractor who cofounded the company with friend Steve LeBlanc in 2013.
‘‘If you’re not latching on to sustainable agriculture technologies now, you’re going to be a dinosaur.’’
Green Relief’s closedloop system, which raises 6000 tilapia and 4500 plants at any given time, used 90% less water than conventional agriculture, while delivering 10%20% better yields than traditional methods, Bravo said.
Every five weeks, Green Relief purges one of its 16 fish tanks, donating some 300 marketsize tilapia to Second Harvest, a food charity which delivers the fish to a homeless shelter’s kitchen.
A C$60 million ($NZ66.2 million) expansion is under way at the company’s rural base outside Hamilton, about an hour’s drive west of Toronto, which will add 15,000kg to 20,000kg to annual output.
The project also includes manufacturing and packaging operations, to process plants from its satellite operations.
That includes a recently acquired 9290sq m indoor soccer complex in Hamilton, which will produce some 15,000kg of pot after a C$9 million retrofit.
With partners, Green Relief is also building facilities in Thunder Bay, Ontario and Halifax, Nova Scotia that will each produce some 20,000kg annually, Bravo said.
Backed to date with some C$18 million from private investors, Green Relief is preparing to list on the Canadian Securities Exchange, and possibly Nasdaq, to help fund its growth plans.
An initial public offering was likely ‘‘within months’’, depending on market conditions, and would build on a current financing that priced 100 million shares at C$3.50 each, Bravo said.
Green Relief could break even within months and expected to be profitable this year, he said.
Bravo had been chief executive until he handed the job on an interim basis in January to John Durfy, who has a background in markets and investment.
As majority shareholder and director of business development, Bravo is busy securing properties in Italy and Australia while advancing such joint ventures as an alliance with Switzerland’s Ai Fame and Ai Lab.
‘‘Canada’s in a very fortunate position right now,’’ he said, referencing the country’s worldleading legalisation of recreational cannabis in October last year.
‘‘We get to take the lead in a brand new industry.’’