When it comes to selecting the right equipment tech stack for our clients, it is essential to prioritize both return on investment (ROI) and sustainability.
A shining example of an ACC equipment tech stack partner that excels in ROI & sustainability is KE Fibertec. KEF specializes in energy efficiency solutions that provide long-term returns that help our clients to reduce their energy costs and preserve the environment for future generations.
The company also puts an emphasis on indoor air quality when designing its systems, ensuring airflow is properly balanced while meeting stringent ventilation requirements. By creating efficient and effective systems, KEF helps to ensure the production of healthy cannabis plants while reducing energy consumption.
It is important to consider that KEF is a cradle-to-cradle-certified company. To become certified, a product must meet strict standards based on a holistic view of product life cycles. This certification is focused on the use of resources throughout the entire lifecycle of a product, including material selection, production processes, and eventual reuse or recycling options.
KEF achieved a Cradle-to-Cradle certification of CradleVent by meeting the requirements of the certification, including the use of non-toxic materials, support for circular economy strategies, reduction or elimination of hazardous substances, and efficient use of energy. In addition, all electric power consumed by KE Fibertec and its weaving mill (KEFVaeveri) is generated by windmills. Consequently, it is CO2 neutral and not harmful to the environment.
KEFs CradleVent system supports sustainable cannabis production by providing an effective solution for ventilation that is both reliable and energy efficient. For these reasons, ACC is very proud to have KE Fabrictec as an equipment tech stack partner because they are at the forefront of product development and environmental considerations.
Commercial cannabis growers must navigate a market with increasing levels of competition and consumers who are becoming increasingly discriminating in their preferences for quality products. In addition, state and federal regulations for this industry continue to evolve at a rapid pace, forcing commercial growers to constantly adapt. It should come as no surprise that running a profitable commercial cannabis cultivation business has become challenging in this climate.
While the specific challenges impacting your business may vary depending on whether you grow indoors or outdoors and the state in which your operation is located, there are certain issues that all cannabis growers must contend with. These include:
High costs
Oversupply in the market
Difficulty in differentiating your products
Let’s examine the ways in which these issues are impacting commercial cannabis cultivation businesses and explore an effective solution that will help you rise above these challenges to differentiate your business as an industry leader moving forward.
High Costs
Having the right team is critical to the success of your cannabis cultivation business. You need a highly skilled and experienced team of growers to maximize your yields and ensure your cannabis products are extremely high quality. Cannabis cultivation is a very labor-intensive process, which can drive up the costs associated with a workforce possessing this kind of niche skillset.
For this reason, labor becomes one of the biggest areas where you have an opportunity to cut costs if you’re able to establish a more effective and efficient growing process. Your equipment is a sunk cost – you already own it, and you need to leverage your existing equipment as best you can. But if you’re able to simplify your growing process and lower your labor costs, you can potentially streamline your team and more effectively manage your overall operational costs.
Another item driving up your costs is the nutrients required to nurture your plants. Most growing processes require the use of a variety of supplemental nutrients to improve yield and maximize quality. These nutrients can be very expensive, especially since they must be purchased for each new grow cycle.
Living Soil Can Help You Reduce Costs
One way to lower both of these costs is to grow your cannabis plants in living soil. Living soil is highly nutrient rich, providing everything your plants need to thrive. This allows you to cut down on both your labor costs and the cost of additional nutrients required as part of the growing process:
Labor costs are reduced because less maintenance is required throughout the growing process. Your team doesn’t need to consistently add nutrients on a prescribed schedule to ensure the best quality products.
Since all the nutrients you need are contained within the soil, you eliminate the need to purchase supplemental materials to nurture your plants. This further lowers your overall costs.
Oversupply in the Market
As the cannabis industry continues to expand nationwide, we’re seeing a larger influx of growers entering the industry. There are more cultivation operations than ever before, and this is causing the marketplace to get flooded with product. As a result, cannabis prices are dropping to the point where it’s becoming harder to turn a profit.
On average, retail cannabis prices fell approximately 20% between July 2021 and July 2022, marking the largest decline in any 12-month period in the history of the cannabis industry. Keep in mind that this figure represents a national average. In mature cannabis markets such as Colorado, Oregon, Washington and California, the drop in prices was significantly greater. The oversupply issue represents one of the greatest challenges to the profitability and long term sustainability of most cannabis cultivation operations.
Since market conditions make it difficult for commercial growers to dictate the price they charge, they must become even more diligent at controlling their costs. As discussed in the first challenge, this involves utilizing the most effective soil and growing methods to limit labor and nutrient costs, while maximizing the quality and yield of the plants produced.
Difficulty Differentiating Products
Most cannabis cultivation operations have the ability to produce quality flower with interesting strains and terpene profiles. Unless you’re able to go above and beyond this standard, it’s going to be virtually impossible to differentiate from every other commercial grower competing against you in an oversaturated market.
In order to differentiate, you’ll need to provide something other growers don’t provide, such as:
Certifications
Organic product
Clean green growing process
These differentiators have become increasingly important because cannabis consumers are more educated than ever and as a result, their preferences are evolving. THC level is no longer the driving factor behind consumer purchasing preferences. Cannabis users are understanding the ways in which terpenes and cannabinoids work together to create an enhanced overall experience. They also understand that an organic, clean green growing process and product is healthier and delivers a better consumption experience.
In order to make your products stand out, you must now be able to produce flower that caters to the increasingly sophisticated preferences of consumers. Using a living soil product that is certified organic will deliver the quality consumers crave, and a clean green growing process will provide an additional differentiator to help your cannabis plants stand out against your competitors.
SoHum Living Soils® Delivers the Quality You Need to Overcome These Cultivation Challenges
SoHum Living Soils® is an award winning, triple certified living soil product that will help your grow operation stay on the forefront of the organic, clean green cannabis cultivation movement. It can be used for both indoor and outdoor cannabis cultivation applications. As a complete water-only living soil, it allows you to maximize your plant’s genetic potential while delivering the quality terpene profiles consumers demand. If so desired, you can add a few organic amendments to set even higher milestones with cannabinoid and terpene profiles.
Very few living soil products possess all three certifications achieved by SoHum Living Soils®:
OMRI Listed® – This certification is required for a living soil product to be used in organic cultivation and production under the USDA National Organic Program.
Clean Green Certified® – This provides the equivalent organic certification for cannabis products as the USDA organic certification provides for organically grown produce.
OIM Registered –This certification ensures your materials are verified to comply with the California Fertilizing Materials Law and Regulations and the USDA National Organic Program Standards.
You’ll experience a variety of benefits when you use SoHum Living Soils® with your indoor or outdoor commercial cultivation operation:
When you combine SoHum Living Soils® with an automated watering system such as AutoPots, you can reduce these costs even more.
Talk to American Cannabis Company About a Trial Analysis
American Cannabis Company helps businesses design, build and optimize their commercial cultivation operations. We provide robust consulting and solutions to improve the efficiency and quality of your operation while addressing the challenges that threaten your long-term success – including price compression in the market.
Our team can work with you to design an indoor or outdoor grow operation that meets all clean green certified requirements. We can outfit your entire facility, or just a section for research & development testing.
As part of this trial analysis, ACC:
Provides you with a guide to help you test the results you achieve from this process compared with your existing process
Helps you perform a cost comparison analysis so you can see the impact you’ll have on your profitability
Provides ongoing customer support and coaching to help your team optimize their growing process and get the most out of this trial analysis
If you’re an outdoor cultivation operation, this is the time to evaluate new products and processes for your upcoming outdoor grow season. We can get you set up with your trial analysis now so that you’ll have the results in time for your spring grow.
If you’re an indoor grower, talk to us about setting up a test when you begin your next grow cycle.
Contact us today to learn more about setting up your trial analysis.
Cultivation task management is an important way to refine your processes in order to get the most out of your grow operation. You need to gain data that will help you improve your process over time from yield to yield. Cultivation task management provides learning opportunities for your team to ensure they gain the knowledge and insights to better themselves and to improve their processes.
At its core, cultivation task management is about education – the value of this process is to collect the data that will help you get better at what you’re doing to ensure you’re growing the best cannabis plants possible. Without this data, it’s very hard to measure the success of your operation. Acquiring this data from your cultivation task management efforts allows you to measure and quantify your results to guide your decision making and constantly improve your operations.
There are several elements you must consider when setting up your cultivation task management process. By addressing the following items, you can set your team up for success and gain the valuable insights necessary to improve your grow operation over time.
Designate a Lead/Point Person to Manage the Process
Cannabis Cultivation Task Management
While there will be multiple team members involved in your cultivation task management efforts, it’s crucial to designate one lead person to manage the entire process. This person will be in charge of holding all other team members accountable for their role and ensuring that day to day, all tasks are getting accomplished to move the cultivation process forward.
In order to set your cultivation task management process up for success, your lead person must possess the following attributes:
Computer savvy
Understands how to read analytics data
Has the ability to effectively manage people
Is a good trainer (your lead person must relate the data to the rest of the team and instruct them on how to make improvements to your process)
Write Down Your SOPs
It’s important to document the process. This ensures all team members understand how cultivation task management works and what needs to be done during each stage.
Over time, these standard operating procedures (SOPs) may need to be adjusted as your process evolves. The goal is to constantly improve and refine your process to achieve better results with each grow. Writing down your SOPs not only documents your process to ensure it’s being followed correctly, but it also helps you identify steps which may need to be refined over time.
Integrate and Implement Your SOPs
Once you’ve identified and documented your SOPs, it’s time to implement them with your cultivation task management efforts. The key to implementing your SOPs is proper training. You’ll need to define every team member’s role and responsibility, and train them on what every task they’re responsible for entails.
This training should be a one-on-one process with each employee. This will allow you make sure each person understands the process and how everything is expected to be done. By conducting your training in a one-on-one format, you’ll provide greater accountability and get everyone up to speed faster.
Choose a Tracking Mechanism
Cannabis Cultivation Task Management Tracking
You need to have some sort of structure to track the entire growing process. This will let you know what is being done on a daily basis and how these tasks are being accomplished. There are several different tools you can use to track the process:
Google calendar
Excel spreadsheet
Artemis
Tryn
It doesn’t matter which of these systems you use. Choose the tool that you are most comfortable with and which makes the most sense for your workflow. The important thing is that you’re using something to track the elements of the cultivation process.
The software used in tracking your process will document how long it takes for team members to perform each task. This lets you know that the proper amount of time has been dedicated to each task in the cultivation management process. If you’re using a spreadsheet or Google calendar instead of one of the software tools listed above, you’ll need to have your team enter detailed notes regarding what was completed each day and what still needs to be done.
American Cannabis Company Can Help
Cultivation task management is an essential part of your grow operation, and it’s crucial that you set this process up properly to ensure you have the data you need to continuously improve your ability to grow the best possible cannabis plants. There are many aspects of the cultivation task management process which must be addressed, and it can be helpful to enlist the assistance of a third-party consultant to ensure you’re doing everything correctly. If you feel like you’d benefit from this assistance, American Cannabis Company can help.
At American Cannabis Company, we have a team of experienced growers and cultivation experts who have invested years in testing and refining their processes to develop the best plants possible. We’re not tied to a specific solution. Instead, our team will always recommend the best process to address the unique needs of your business. This allows us to help you customize your cultivation task management efforts for the best possible results.
Our team has been on the forefront of clean green growing for years, and we can help you establish a Clean Green Certified process that uses federally organic standards established under USDA guidelines. This can help you maintain an environmentally sustainable grow process that produces the best quality plants.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation. We serve clients nationwide.
One way to lower both of these costs is to grow your cannabis plants in living soil. Living soil is highly nutrient rich, providing everything your plants need to thrive. This allows you to cut down on both your labor costs and the cost of additional nutrients required as part of the growing process:
