Critics often highlight odor nuisances associated with cannabis cultivation, but it is important to acknowledge that vineyards, too, emit strong smells due to the use of agricultural inputs like sulfur. Addressing odor concerns without considering the broader context of other agricultural activities may lead to unfair treatment. Similarly, noise and lighting impacts are often cited as potential drawbacks of cannabis cultivation, but vineyard operations involving heavy equipment and non-downcast lighting practices can also disrupt neighboring communities.
Let’s step off the cannabis farm for a minute and instead look to agriculture as a whole. The cannabis industry has picked up a lot of lessons from the farming world, and while taking a fallow year doesn’t yet appear to be a widely-adopted trend, this year may be different.
While winter brings some time for rest and recovery, for those involved in year-round cultivation, the new season brings added complexities for growing cannabis. The plant is thought to have evolved about 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, which is home to extremely cold winters. While cannabis can grow in the winter, taking some extra steps to support your greenhouse cannabis cultivation can certainly help.
In a market that’s increasingly being taken over by large-scale production, lower quality, and cheaper prices, it’s important to look at the better alternative: craft cannabis. What makes Giving Tree Farms and other craft cannabis producers stand out? From seed-to-package, there’s a certain mindfulness involved. So, let’s take a look at what harvesting craft cannabis entails.
Fresh-frozen cannabis has taken the cannabis world by storm in recent years. As the name suggests, fresh-frozen cannabis entails freezing the harvest directly after it’s been picked. It’s been growing in popularity—especially as it’s one of the best methods we have to preserve terpenes and cannabinoids.
Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at how we go about producing fresh-frozen cannabis.
As a wholesale cannabis cultivator, we’re introduced to some exceptional brands throughout the year. Some of them, however, have really stuck with us. Whether it's their sustainable values, their small farmer sourcing, or their drive to make a difference, the following brands have taken "business" a step further.
We know every business is different, each in its unique stage of growth and development. Because of this, we offer payment terms to our approved clients to make purchasing easier and more achievable. In order to provide this service to our buyers, we implement a business credit application that we ask applicable businesses to fill out before payment terms are extended. This process may come with a few questions that we hope to address in this reference article.
This year has taught us many things so far, both personally and professionally. When the normal day-to-day was flipped upside down and COVID-19 said its hello, our weaknesses were highlighted and our strengths had to be fully utilized. But what these times have also shown us is the power we have when we work together. We now have proven data to display our potential in numbers, pointing to how we can flatten a curve simply by all agreeing to stay inside. But this strength in numbers idea doesn't have to be limited to our 2020 pandemic. Instead, we can rise out of this challenge with wisdom and new knowledge. We can use this opportunity to shape our futures, molding it into the reality we've always wanted to see.
To achieve cultivation success, we have to begin from the ground up. Precision soil sampling is our starting line. As an environmental-focused farm, we reuse and rebuild our soil each year, giving back to the earth while we lower our ecological footprint. But to do this, we have to understand what nutrients are lacking in our soil, as well as precisely where they are missing in the field. When we're armed with this data, we can create a foundation that helps us produce exceptional cannabis harvest after harvest.
The mainstream media hasn't entirely hopped on board when it comes to reporting the cannabis industry. Some bits, like the number of tax dollars collected, the shutting down of illegal operations, and the exploding of cannabis stocks, are reported to the masses, but other areas of information, like the boom of cannabis employment, hasn't received the same level of coverage. While this may seem like a small slice of cannabis industry information that the masses could do without, there are ripples that reverberate up the supply chain as a result, and cannabis farmers feel the quake.
Every year the world's population increases by an average of 1.1%, or about 81 million people. With limited land and resources, and the population growth reluctant to cease, the challenge for farmers has become: How do we produce more with less so we can supply a climbing population?
Conflicts of perspective can occur even in the most like-minded communities. When people are passionate about a cause, it’s sometimes easier to put blinders on than to accept facts and data that contradict our worldview. A version of this head-in-the-sand scenario is currently playing out in the California cannabis industry, specifically around the subject of mixed-light grow operations.
Our California cannabis regulators have been hard at work, drafting up regulations for a state-wide organic certification. This four-person team inside of CalCannabis, a branch of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), is putting together a program comparable to the National Organic Program (NOP) to ensure a smooth transition when cannabis becomes federally legal. The NOP owns the USDA organic logo.
