Manufacturing greenhouse automation systems since 1985, Climate Control Systems Inc. has three flagship products helping growers maximize crop yields, improve water conservation and energy efficiency for commercial greenhouse operations across the globe. The company provides automation to greenhouse growers for vegetable crops, flowers, vertical farm operations and, of course, cannabis growers. Acquired by Nebula Group in 2019, the company’s mission is to “expand leadership in food production and safety in a localized manner through the decentralization of the food supply chain via sustainab ..read more

Designing and building your cannabis cultivation facility is more than just the structure itself. Making sure the growing environment you choose is ideal for your crop is equally important; it takes careful, consistent effort in your day-to-day operations to ensure that you provide the right environment at each stage of the plant’s lifecycle. The temperature and humidity of your greenhouse or indoor grow space, also needs to be constantly kept within the desired ranges through ventilation, lighting, insulation, irrigation, heating, and cooling systems. Other than choosing the right growing env ..read more

Indoor cultivation has several advantages when it comes to cannabis production, but, at a broad level, the No. 1 advantage is the ability to manipulate the environment. GPN reached out to Brandy Keen, co-founder and senior technical advisor at Surna Cultivation Technologies, to talk about the role climate plays in perfecting the outcome of the harvest. Here, she tackles setting temperature and humidity targets, the role of automation, and prioritizing investments. GPN: Climate is one of the main reasons to grow indoors, but there’s a lot that goes into creating an ideal climate. Can you talk a ..read more

The cannabis industry is still a new market, and with that come several challenges and opportunities. Fellow growers who are navigating these waters on a day-to-day basis offer the best insights into crop production and how to be successful and profitable. GPN recently hosted a panel discussion with Travis Higginbotham, vice president of production at StateHouse Holdings Inc.; Sean Sangster, regional director of cultivation at Curaleaf; Colin Clark, owner of Never Winter Botanicals; and Javier Garces, Ph.D., horticulture advisor at Treadwell Farms. These four growers tackled several topics, in ..read more

With a commercial cannabis operation, variable overhead costs can quickly eat into profits. A recent trial looked at the advantages of HydraMax recirculating deep water culture (RDWC) systems from Hydra Unlimited. In the trial, a 7,000-plant operation saw a significant reduction in water and nutrient consumption when using the HydraMax solution, compared to the grower’s standard coco coir substrate technique. The investment in expensive, time-consuming water content monitoring was also eliminated because the HydraMax buckets are always full. The trial with a five-year-old company involved four ..read more

Fluence-supported research has now been released as part of the seventh-annual “State of the Cannabis Lighting Market” report by Readex Research. Results from the 2022 report demonstrate the increasing usage of LED lighting technology across all growth stages of cannabis cultivation. For the first time ever, at least 70% of study participants from commercial indoor or greenhouse operations with supplemental lighting used LEDs in cannabis propagation, vegetation and/or flowering stages. The report also demonstrates an increase in LED usage by more than 50 percentage points since the study’s fi ..read more

Hero Technologies, a cannabis company focused on a “seed-to-sale” vertical integration strategy, announced its subsidiary, BlackBox Systems and Technologies LLC, continues to project aggressive growth for its planned cannabis operations in Michigan. Michigan’s legal marijuana market has surged since adult recreational use was permitted in 2020. (Medical marijuana has been legal in the state since 2008.) According to statistics from the Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency: Sales of legal cannabis in Michigan neared $1.8 billion in 2021, with adult recreational use generating 73% of the total ..read more

Livewire Ergogenics Inc.’s affiliate Estrella River Farms has been approved for nine additional cultivation licenses from the California Department of Cannabis Control for the expansion of the cultivation area on Estrella Ranch by two additional acres. The expansion will increase the canopy area on Estrella Ranch to over 130,000 square feet to accommodate increased production and begin the process for the 2022 harvest. The approval of these additional licenses completes the goal that the company had set for cultivating the equivalent of three acres of sun-grown cannabis on Estrella Ranch ..read more

The cultivation tax no longer applies to harvested cannabis entering the commercial market in California. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 195 into law, which eliminated this tax as of July 1, 2022, as part of a $308 billion state budget. Distributors and manufacturers are no longer required to collect the cultivation tax from cultivators. Cultivators are no longer responsible for paying the cultivation tax to manufacturers or distributors when cultivators sell or transfer cannabis to another licensee. Any cultivation tax collected on harvested cannabis that enters the commercial ma ..read more

The Department of Revenue (DOR) plans to cap combined grow licenses for tribes in Montana at Tier 1, the smallest size of no more than 1,000 square feet of grow space. This is according to a letter sent on June 2 to the Economic Affairs Interim Committee by DOR Director Brendan Beatty and reported by the Montana Free Press. In the letter, Beatty insists that the language in House Bill 701 requires this Tier 1 cap, but the Montana Free Press notes that after the legislative session in 2021, lawmakers confirmed tribes could scale up over time, just like any conventional cultivation license. “Dur ..read more