CBD OIL

TL: I saw that you earned your MBA from USC—are you originally from Southern California?

EW: No, I was actually born in Taipei, Taiwan. And I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. So, I am American, but I became an American almost 20 years ago. I kind of have been all over the map a little bit.

TL: Have you personally or indirectly been impacted by factors associated with the Stop Asian Hate movement in 2021?

EW: Yes. First, it’s been a weird time that has been at times personally frightening, saddening, just alarming in terms of actually having to fear for your own personal safety in public spaces. That is something that was a heightened thing for myself personally in 2021, you know, having a sense of like, ‘Should I be taking extra safety precautions in certain situations?’ On that point, it impacted me in that way. It definitely also made me think more reflectively as well in terms of, ‘What is my role in this?’ In my position, what are the steps that I should be taking? What do I have to do versus what do I feel I should do? Because you feel this sense of responsibility that you have to be a voice and sometimes that’s tiring. Sometimes, you don’t want to have to represent. But regardless of whether you want to or not, you’re a face that people want to know, ‘Hey, what are you thinking about this? What is your stance on this?’ So, yeah, I would say from just a personal safety perspective I have been impacted. Also, I’ve reflected on how I can communicate my personal views on this in a way that can help.

TL: What’s your perspective on the importance of increasing AAPI diversity in the cannabis and CBD space?

EW: I’ve always had this feeling, regardless of being in cannabis or not—I think diversity is something that we need in every category, every industry. If you have a category, if you are trying to appeal to a diverse consumer base in any type of intelligent way, I think you need to have a diverse base of people inside your company internally to be able to connect with that consumer. If you speak to any cannabis or CBD dispensary owner these days, they too will tell you that the consumers who are coming into dispensaries are changing. There are many different types of demographics that you might not have seen even three to five years ago that are now in dispensaries.

So, cannabis is really starting to appeal to a broad base of people. I think that is even more why we need to have diversity in this industry. There’s so much room for innovation in the industry still. It’s still one thing that attracted me to the industry is that it’s very young. We’re only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of the type of innovation we can bring. So, the more different ideas we have, the better for the industry.

In general, I would say, yes, most people from AAPI backgrounds have probably come from a more culturally conservative background. There is probably more cultural hesitancy around an industry that’s still not federally legalized. But I think the more people who can enter the industry and sort of be an ambassador back into their communities, the better for de-stigmatizing the industry.

TL: What’s your perception on cannabis and how it relates to either your heritage or the AAPI community in general?

EW: It’s been so interesting for me to actually delve into the history of cannabis myself and learn and discover that cannabis, if you want to look at it historically, has actually been part of Asian culture for thousands of years. It was a major crop grown in China in like 4,000 B.C. There’s definitely a historical connection there for sure.

Regardless of that, it’s not about how far back in your culture cannabis goes. You don’t have to be able to say ‘Oh, my people were part of cannabis thousands of years ago’ to say that you belong in the industry. I think it’s really a sense of being able to just say, ‘Yeah, I’m interested in cannabis and I belong here. I have a stake and I have a voice at the table.’ That’s really how I view it. I think that cannabis can be for everyone. And I definitely think while there is a specific connection for Asians to cannabis, regardless of that, they belong in the industry.

According to a press release published earlier this month, the Bio-Rad iQ-Check Aspergilllus Real-Time PCR Detection Kit has received AOAC International approval. The test covers detection for four different Aspergillus species: A. flavus, A. fumigatus, A. niger, and A. terreus.

The detection kit covers those Aspergillus species for testing in cannabis flower and cannabis concentrates, produced with our without solvents. The PCR detection kit was validated through the AOAC Research Institute’s Performance Tested Method Program. They conducted a study that resulted in “no significant difference” between the PCR detection kit and the reference method.

The kit was evaluated on “robustness, product consistency, stability, inclusivity and exclusivity, and matrix studies,” the press release says. Bio-Rad also received approval and validation on the iQ-Check Free DNA Removal Solution, part of the workflow for testing cannabis flower.

The test kit uses gene amplification and real-time PCR detection. Following enrichment and DNA extraction, the test runs their PCR technology, then runs the CFX Manager IDE software to automatically generate and analyze results.

Bio’Rad has also recently received AOAC approval for other microbial testing methods in cannabis, including their iQ-Check Salmonella II, iQ-Check STEC VirX, and iQ-Check STEC SerO II PCR Detection Kits.

Regardless of their size, all consumer package brands spend a significant amount of money and resources on packaging to attract consumers’ attention. We are all very visually oriented and gravitate to items that pique our interests. Cannabis brands are no exception when it comes to branding their products. Packaging plays a big part in carrying their brand forward and standing out on the dispensary shelves. When I was in Las Vegas at a CBD tradeshow in early 2020, I visited a dispensary, and it was beautiful. I remember commenting to a colleague that was with me how spectacular the product packaging was in the glass cases. One had unique artwork on each different product they offered, and it was indeed art. Yes, I did purchase this one that pulled me in.

The cannabis industry in the United States presents a challenge to brands because there is no overall federal guidance for packaging. Each state is controlling the cannabis legislation and, with it, the packaging guidelines. So multi-state operators (MSOs) have to manage each state as a separate entity and abide by the packaging regulations, which is not very efficient and adds a cost burden. As the industry matures and becomes federally legal across the country, packaging regulations will be easier to implement.

Let’s take a look at counterfeit products across all product categories. There is a significant global problem with counterfeits, as articulated by the below statistics.

The total global trade in fakes is estimated at around $4.5 trillion. 

Fake luxury merchandise accounts for 60% to 70% of that amount, ahead of pharmaceuticals, entertainment products and representing perhaps a quarter of the estimated $1.2 trillion total trade in luxury goods.

Digital plays a big role in this and perhaps 40% of the sales in luxury fakes take place online.

Customs and Border Patrol confiscated $1.3 billion worth of counterfeit goods in the U.S. for Fiscal Year 2020. (The value of 2020’s seizures are actually down compared to the $1.5 billion worth of counterfeit goods seized by CBP in 2019).

Unfortunately, the figures above are concerning, and the cannabis industry will face the same counterfeit issues that will add to these stats in the future. What can be done to help fight the problem and alleviate the pain for cannabis brands? Smart technology.

The trend towards “smart technology” varies by sector, but the underlying concept involves building levels of technology systems designed to impede or limit the highly sophisticated counterfeiter from replicating or replacing products. These levels typically include a forensic level control on the product, digital systems to track the material and customer facing systems to articulate the underlying value to the consumer.

Building these levels of smart technology into cannabis-products and packaging allows consumers to authenticate real versus fake, and in the case often in cannabis, legal versus illegal. Molecular technology is one forensic level of control option that can be used as a unique identifier for product authentication. Each brand would get its unique identifier to apply to the raw materials that make up its product, such as oil or an isolate. Then a sample can be tested at the origin point and subsequent nodes in the supply chain using a remote testing device. All the digital data is captured in a secure cloud database for traceability and transparency to the end consumer, to show them the authenticity of the product they are consuming. The same molecular technology can be applied to the ink or varnish for packaging and labels. A great application to help combat counterfeits and product diversion across the globe.

Another engaging platform is called StrainSecure by TruTrace Technologies. Their SAAS platform allows cannabis manufacturers to track all their product batches and SKUs tied to a blockchain. It also facilitates the interaction between the manufacturer and third-party testing facilities to conduct product testing and reporting. The data is captured within the platform, and with easy access dashboard views, it provides the insights to authenticate products at any time.

A company out of Australia called Laava is producing a product called Smart Fingerprints. It’s the next evolution of QR codes. The Smart Fingerprints can be applied to each package, providing a unique identifier that consumers can read with a mobile phone application. The consumer is provided with information concerning the product’s authenticity and any additional information the brand wants to share with the user. Smart Fingerprints are a great example of customer engagement at the point of activity that is secure.

The above three solutions show the availability of advanced technologies the cannabis industry can implement on its packaging and products to ensure authentic and safe products are sold to consumers. It provides consumers with vital information and insights about products so they can make informed buying decisions. There is no one silver bullet solution that provides all the answers. As with every high value product, counterfeiters will work to create near duplicate versions of the original until it becomes unsustainable to do so. It will take a technology ecosystem to seamlessly connect and provide actuate and timely information between supply chain partners and ultimately the end consumer. As the US works to separate the legal from illegal production for both the adult use and medical supply of cannabis, the looming challenge will be on protecting and communicating authenticity, packaging will be the first step in this.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

When Amber Speckman started cultivating cannabis nearly a decade ago in Northern California, it was consistent with her passion to help people.

Speckman’s background includes a master’s degree in marketing and business, but spending two years helping to nurse her mother, who died of cancer, motivated her to go back to school and earn degrees in holistic health and nutrition. Speckman then moved out of the country and opened a holistic health and wellness center, which she ran for seven years.

But when her father’s health began to decline, she moved back home to take care of him and had a son at the time. To meet the financial needs of her family, Speckman put 25 cannabis plants in the ground, which she said was the legal number she could cultivate in 2013 with her medical license. 

“It was consistent with my passion to help people,” she said. “I’ve always loved natural medicine. And it was a way that I could work from home, take care of my family and then also provide natural health and medicine to people who needed it. So, that’s how I started cultivation about a decade ago.”

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

The owner of Sol 7 Farms, Speckman’s family operation now has seven team members who cultivate 14,000 square feet of cannabis and produce high-end flower from the Emerald Triangle.

While Speckman doesn’t consider herself a legacy farmer, she’s passionate about keeping smaller farms in business, she said. Working toward that objective, she’s one of seven farm owners in the Emerald Triangle—including Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties—who joined forces to launch Cannavia, a cannabis company that is legally a corporation but aims to function in the spirit of a cooperative.

Founded by co-CEOs Michael Horner and Chris Leonard in 2019, Cannavia is vertically integrated and fully owned by its farmer and producer members. It’s pillared to help smaller farms own their brands, build equity and retain the legacy culture that helped create the cannabis space in the first place, Horner said. Furthermore, Cannavia is designed to help small-scale farmers in California maintain their independence and financial stability, he said.

Under the Cannavia brand, farmers collaborate to grow predetermined cultivars and harvest enough product to not only secure shelf space in retailers but produce consistent yields to keep that shelf space. All the initial fundraising, starting with the seed money, comes from the family farmers, who buy into the company to receive brand equity and shares in the corporation. While the farmers focus on growing, Horner and Leonard, who have entrepreneurial shares in the company, handle corporate structures like branding and distribution.

Through that collaborative membership in Cannavia, Northern California farmers can focus almost all of their efforts into growing quality and consistent products while still maintaining some sense of ownership and control in a vertically integrated marketplace, Speckman said.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

Although Speckman has a background in business—as do other founding members of Cannavia—she said she does not have time to be shopping her product around.

“I think for smaller farms, in order to be effective and functional, they need to really work together,” Speckman said. “We all know the necessity of working together to not just succeed and thrive, but to actually just survive.”

Geared toward operating in the spirt of a cooperative, Cannavia’s farmers have had to concede some of their individual practices and wishes, such as cultivars they grow under the brand name, in order to achieve the same quality product, Speckman said. Consistency in that product, even down to the size of the flower nuggets they package, can be a determining factor in the Cannavia brand success, she added.

Preserving the Fabric of the Industry

Courtesy of Cannavia

Horner found his roots in the cannabis industry in 2008, when he left his corporate job to start a consulting firm to help entrepreneurs and businesspeople create “legitimate” businesses out of what they had been doing for years as a labor of love, he said. 

“I’ve always kind of rooted for the underdog and wanted to help the little guy,” he said. “At the end of the day, a group of small family farms are stronger than they can ever be on their own.”

While an uptick in consolations among multistate operators continue grab headlines as the space matures, the cannabis industry historically has been very much “mom and pop” with a rebellious culture at its core, Leonard said.

“I used to always tell people, ‘Hey, it’s the coolest industry in the world,’ when I was going to the funkiest little pockets of California to meet these shop owners and operators that were servicing the grow community,” he said. “So, just historically, it’s the people, it’s the character, like, the fabric that has held all this together. And somebody said this at one of the shows a long time ago, … ‘Look, none of us are rocket scientists, but it’s our soul, it’s our passion,’ and that’s the glue that stitches this whole fabric together. That’s what’s kept me in the industry for a long time.”

Cannavia co-founder Leonard entered the cannabis space with a friend, manufacturing grow lights in the mid-2000s, but his specialty is on the branding and marketing side of the industry. In 2015, he co-founded Cannaverse Solutions, which is built to arm heritage farmers with the tools they would need to compete in the marketplace, he said.

“What you learn really quick is it’s near impossible for a single farm to go out in the marketplace in California and make a real big impact,” Leonard said. “Unless you’ve got a lot of capital behind you, unless you’ve got a bunch of business-savvy people, you’ve got a legal team—you really need to have a lot to compete in this marketplace just due to the size and because it’s so overregulated.”

RELATED: California’s Cannabis Industry Marred by Limited Supply Chain and Heavy Tax Burden

 

A Collective Stake

As state-by-state markets continue to grow, those already with a footprint in the sector are poised to go bigger while potential major players outside the cannabis industry are looking for a way in, said Jared Schwass, a licensed attorney in California who is an associate in the Fox Rothschild law firm’s Cannabis Law Practice Group.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

In February—three months before Trulieve Cannabis Corp., a licensed operator in California, announced its $2.1-billion definitive arrangement to  acquire  Harvest Health and Recreation Inc.—Schwass told Cannabis Business Times that consolidation in the California market was ripe, partly because of its abundance of independent operators. 

“The small farmers up in Northern California are struggling,” he said about remaining competitive in a maturing market that continues to consolidate. “But I think through struggle comes perseverance. I think there is something to be said about these small farms and these small kind of craft brands that there still is a market for them, and there will continue to be a market for them.”

At first, there were some growing pains associated with seven established farmers developing one standard operating procedure under the Cannavia brand, Speckman said.

“It’s like herding cats. It’s not as simple as it sounds,” she said. “We’ve all been individual mavericks for so long, and then all of a sudden we all have to work together. It’s not that it’s been extremely hard; it’s just, you have to be willing to adapt.”

But the payoff could be huge, Horner said.

While Cannavia launched with seven founding farmers, the company is in the process of adding 12 more farms to its controlling membership this year, Horner said. The goal is to expand to 40 acres of production, which would make Cannavia competitive with some of the largest cultivators in the state, he said.

Inspired by cooperatives like the Tillamook County Creamery Association headquartered in Oregon—a 100-plus-year-old company that sells dairy products like cheese and ice cream under the nationwide “Tillamook” brand name—Cannavia is working toward securing more shelf space in top-line retailers, Horner said.

“We want to be that for the cannabis industry,” he said, referencing Tillamook. “So, that sort of brand equity is one of the big reasons to be involved with a corporation like ours. Cannavia will build the brand and give farmers the brand equity piece that they need [in order] to hold value in their product and not be subject to commodity spot-market pricing season after season. You know, it allows the small family farmer to do what he [or she] wants to do—farm.”

Coming from different backgrounds to steer the same ship, Cannavia farmers have also built a community to exchange knowledge from throughout the Emerald Triangle, Leonard said. Each farm owner controls the direction of the company through his or her seat on Cannavia’s board of directors. 

Sometimes corporate interests can overtake the cannabis culture in a company, which in turn could jeopardize the recipe for success, Leonard said.

“We’re trying to blend our skillset with the heritage part that the farms offer and offer the best possible framework for Cannavia to thrive in the marketplace,” he said. “We need to be able to pool resources, pool our collective knowledge, or collective grit so to speak, and offer a way where there’s a clear pathway forward for these small heritage farms to exist in the marketplace where they’re not just a commodity farmer.”

Functioning as the spirit of a cooperative does take a considerable amount of trust and camaraderie that is not always ubiquitous in the cannabis industry, which historically can be guarded with farmers attached to their individual craft, Speckman said.

Having a collective stake in the marketplace has bridged those divides at Cannavia, she said.

“It’s incredibly beneficial because none of us want to sell out and be corporate and be huge,” Speckman said. “We all want to maintain some semblance of integrity in that small-craft feel, but in order to survive, we really need to work together [and] pool resources to pull it off.”

A Collective Stake

As state-by-state markets continue to grow, those already with a footprint in the sector are poised to go bigger while potential major players outside the cannabis industry are looking for a way in, said Jared Schwass, a licensed attorney in California who is an associate in the Fox Rothschild law firm’s Cannabis Law Practice Group.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

In February—three months before Trulieve Cannabis Corp., a licensed operator in California, announced its $2.1-billion definitive arrangement to  acquire  Harvest Health and Recreation Inc.—Schwass told Cannabis Business Times that consolidation in the California market was ripe, partly because of its abundance of independent operators. 

“The small farmers up in Northern California are struggling,” he said about remaining competitive in a maturing market that continues to consolidate. “But I think through struggle comes perseverance. I think there is something to be said about these small farms and these small kind of craft brands that there still is a market for them, and there will continue to be a market for them.”

At first, there were some growing pains associated with seven established farmers developing one standard operating procedure under the Cannavia brand, Speckman said.

“It’s like herding cats. It’s not as simple as it sounds,” she said. “We’ve all been individual mavericks for so long, and then all of a sudden we all have to work together. It’s not that it’s been extremely hard; it’s just, you have to be willing to adapt.”

But the payoff could be huge, Horner said.

While Cannavia launched with seven founding farmers, the company is in the process of adding 12 more farms to its controlling membership this year, Horner said. The goal is to expand to 40 acres of production, which would make Cannavia competitive with some of the largest cultivators in the state, he said.

Inspired by cooperatives like the Tillamook County Creamery Association headquartered in Oregon—a 100-plus-year-old company that sells dairy products like cheese and ice cream under the nationwide “Tillamook” brand name—Cannavia is working toward securing more shelf space in top-line retailers, Horner said.

“We want to be that for the cannabis industry,” he said, referencing Tillamook. “So, that sort of brand equity is one of the big reasons to be involved with a corporation like ours. Cannavia will build the brand and give farmers the brand equity piece that they need [in order] to hold value in their product and not be subject to commodity spot-market pricing season after season. You know, it allows the small family farmer to do what he [or she] wants to do—farm.”

Coming from different backgrounds to steer the same ship, Cannavia farmers have also built a community to exchange knowledge from throughout the Emerald Triangle, Leonard said. Each farm owner controls the direction of the company through his or her seat on Cannavia’s board of directors. 

Sometimes corporate interests can overtake the cannabis culture in a company, which in turn could jeopardize the recipe for success, Leonard said.

“We’re trying to blend our skillset with the heritage part that the farms offer and offer the best possible framework for Cannavia to thrive in the marketplace,” he said. “We need to be able to pool resources, pool our collective knowledge, or collective grit so to speak, and offer a way where there’s a clear pathway forward for these small heritage farms to exist in the marketplace where they’re not just a commodity farmer.”

Functioning as the spirit of a cooperative does take a considerable amount of trust and camaraderie that is not always ubiquitous in the cannabis industry, which historically can be guarded with farmers attached to their individual craft, Speckman said.

Having a collective stake in the marketplace has bridged those divides at Cannavia, she said.

“It’s incredibly beneficial because none of us want to sell out and be corporate and be huge,” Speckman said. “We all want to maintain some semblance of integrity in that small-craft feel, but in order to survive, we really need to work together [and] pool resources to pull it off.”

A Collective Stake

As state-by-state markets continue to grow, those already with a footprint in the sector are poised to go bigger while potential major players outside the cannabis industry are looking for a way in, said Jared Schwass, a licensed attorney in California who is an associate in the Fox Rothschild law firm’s Cannabis Law Practice Group.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

In February—three months before Trulieve Cannabis Corp., a licensed operator in California, announced its $2.1-billion definitive arrangement to  acquire  Harvest Health and Recreation Inc.—Schwass told Cannabis Business Times that consolidation in the California market was ripe, partly because of its abundance of independent operators. 

“The small farmers up in Northern California are struggling,” he said about remaining competitive in a maturing market that continues to consolidate. “But I think through struggle comes perseverance. I think there is something to be said about these small farms and these small kind of craft brands that there still is a market for them, and there will continue to be a market for them.”

At first, there were some growing pains associated with seven established farmers developing one standard operating procedure under the Cannavia brand, Speckman said.

“It’s like herding cats. It’s not as simple as it sounds,” she said. “We’ve all been individual mavericks for so long, and then all of a sudden we all have to work together. It’s not that it’s been extremely hard; it’s just, you have to be willing to adapt.”

But the payoff could be huge, Horner said.

While Cannavia launched with seven founding farmers, the company is in the process of adding 12 more farms to its controlling membership this year, Horner said. The goal is to expand to 40 acres of production, which would make Cannavia competitive with some of the largest cultivators in the state, he said.

Inspired by cooperatives like the Tillamook County Creamery Association headquartered in Oregon—a 100-plus-year-old company that sells dairy products like cheese and ice cream under the nationwide “Tillamook” brand name—Cannavia is working toward securing more shelf space in top-line retailers, Horner said.

“We want to be that for the cannabis industry,” he said, referencing Tillamook. “So, that sort of brand equity is one of the big reasons to be involved with a corporation like ours. Cannavia will build the brand and give farmers the brand equity piece that they need [in order] to hold value in their product and not be subject to commodity spot-market pricing season after season. You know, it allows the small family farmer to do what he [or she] wants to do—farm.”

Coming from different backgrounds to steer the same ship, Cannavia farmers have also built a community to exchange knowledge from throughout the Emerald Triangle, Leonard said. Each farm owner controls the direction of the company through his or her seat on Cannavia’s board of directors. 

Sometimes corporate interests can overtake the cannabis culture in a company, which in turn could jeopardize the recipe for success, Leonard said.

“We’re trying to blend our skillset with the heritage part that the farms offer and offer the best possible framework for Cannavia to thrive in the marketplace,” he said. “We need to be able to pool resources, pool our collective knowledge, or collective grit so to speak, and offer a way where there’s a clear pathway forward for these small heritage farms to exist in the marketplace where they’re not just a commodity farmer.”

Functioning as the spirit of a cooperative does take a considerable amount of trust and camaraderie that is not always ubiquitous in the cannabis industry, which historically can be guarded with farmers attached to their individual craft, Speckman said.

Having a collective stake in the marketplace has bridged those divides at Cannavia, she said.

“It’s incredibly beneficial because none of us want to sell out and be corporate and be huge,” Speckman said. “We all want to maintain some semblance of integrity in that small-craft feel, but in order to survive, we really need to work together [and] pool resources to pull it off.”

A Collective Stake

As state-by-state markets continue to grow, those already with a footprint in the sector are poised to go bigger while potential major players outside the cannabis industry are looking for a way in, said Jared Schwass, a licensed attorney in California who is an associate in the Fox Rothschild law firm’s Cannabis Law Practice Group.

Courtesy of Sol 7 Farms

In February—three months before Trulieve Cannabis Corp., a licensed operator in California, announced its $2.1-billion definitive arrangement to  acquire  Harvest Health and Recreation Inc.—Schwass told Cannabis Business Times that consolidation in the California market was ripe, partly because of its abundance of independent operators. 

“The small farmers up in Northern California are struggling,” he said about remaining competitive in a maturing market that continues to consolidate. “But I think through struggle comes perseverance. I think there is something to be said about these small farms and these small kind of craft brands that there still is a market for them, and there will continue to be a market for them.”

At first, there were some growing pains associated with seven established farmers developing one standard operating procedure under the Cannavia brand, Speckman said.

“It’s like herding cats. It’s not as simple as it sounds,” she said. “We’ve all been individual mavericks for so long, and then all of a sudden we all have to work together. It’s not that it’s been extremely hard; it’s just, you have to be willing to adapt.”

But the payoff could be huge, Horner said.

While Cannavia launched with seven founding farmers, the company is in the process of adding 12 more farms to its controlling membership this year, Horner said. The goal is to expand to 40 acres of production, which would make Cannavia competitive with some of the largest cultivators in the state, he said.

Inspired by cooperatives like the Tillamook County Creamery Association headquartered in Oregon—a 100-plus-year-old company that sells dairy products like cheese and ice cream under the nationwide “Tillamook” brand name—Cannavia is working toward securing more shelf space in top-line retailers, Horner said.

“We want to be that for the cannabis industry,” he said, referencing Tillamook. “So, that sort of brand equity is one of the big reasons to be involved with a corporation like ours. Cannavia will build the brand and give farmers the brand equity piece that they need [in order] to hold value in their product and not be subject to commodity spot-market pricing season after season. You know, it allows the small family farmer to do what he [or she] wants to do—farm.”

Coming from different backgrounds to steer the same ship, Cannavia farmers have also built a community to exchange knowledge from throughout the Emerald Triangle, Leonard said. Each farm owner controls the direction of the company through his or her seat on Cannavia’s board of directors. 

Sometimes corporate interests can overtake the cannabis culture in a company, which in turn could jeopardize the recipe for success, Leonard said.

“We’re trying to blend our skillset with the heritage part that the farms offer and offer the best possible framework for Cannavia to thrive in the marketplace,” he said. “We need to be able to pool resources, pool our collective knowledge, or collective grit so to speak, and offer a way where there’s a clear pathway forward for these small heritage farms to exist in the marketplace where they’re not just a commodity farmer.”

Functioning as the spirit of a cooperative does take a considerable amount of trust and camaraderie that is not always ubiquitous in the cannabis industry, which historically can be guarded with farmers attached to their individual craft, Speckman said.

Having a collective stake in the marketplace has bridged those divides at Cannavia, she said.

“It’s incredibly beneficial because none of us want to sell out and be corporate and be huge,” Speckman said. “We all want to maintain some semblance of integrity in that small-craft feel, but in order to survive, we really need to work together [and] pool resources to pull it off.”

Early on, there was a lot of investment there, as a consequence of that striving for accessibility and quality. The only way we can make it accessible is by exploiting efficiencies, which is what farmers traditionally do. And then the high quality really comes from that ability to control the farmed product, rather than having somebody else to it for you.

ES: What does an in-house breeding program allow Raw Garden to do when it comes to interacting with the customer or responding to customer sales trends?

KA: The really cool thing about it is that it almost allots you every opportunity—albeit at a huge expense, mostly in time and energy. What we do is try and follow consumer trends and breed for things that are popular, but we also hedge our bets and utilize our program as an opportunity to hold on to legacy strains or heritage strains that we feel are important things that people will want to come back to. It allows us the ability to plant seeds rather than clones. That allows for an amazing efficiency, not only from a business perspective, but also just in the plants’ production or productiveness. When we plant seeds, we get a good, strong taproot. The subsequent benefits of that are a much more vigorous plant. With clones, oftentimes you get a very repeatable product, but there are sensitivities around when the cutting is taken and the quality of the cutting.

By breeding, we’re really trying to breed for farmable seed that are semi-homogenous, if not homogenous. They give us repeatable aromatic bouquets, but also repeatable agronomic traits that make it easier to farm and easier to harvest. When I say easier to harvest, the uniformity of the crop allows for uniform maturation, which means that you can uniformly harvest. When you have a lot of the variation, so too is there variation in the maturity. So that becomes a big issue.

The biggest thing that it allows us is to drive diversity and assortment. If you think about it, most cannabis producers, especially on a smaller scale, ourselves included at many parts of our iterative cycles, rely on clones.

Clones are really when somebody is taking a bag of seeds and planting them, it’s their favorite plant or the plant that performed or smelled or looked the best to them. So, they select that plant and they make cuttings from it. As a consequence, they end up with a very uniform plant that is needing to be managed in order to keep it in and continue to move forward its progeny. But when you planted those seeds, there were less desirable or different strains that were not selected against for whichever reason. What we find a lot of times nowadays with better genetics is that sometimes breeders will have more than one favorite out of a bag of seeds.

ES: The possibilities seem immense.

KA: A great example is that we were known early on for our Slymer strain, which is an F1 phenotype from Chernobyl, which is from Subcool seeds. They would acknowledge that they have what they would call the Golden Ticket, which was this Slymer phenotype, which for Chernobyl is generally a lemon/chem type of flavor. The Slymer was a very clear lime flavor. So, both of these things were coming out of the same seed line, and it just really depended which expression you got. Similarly, when we’re breeding, back-breeding or crossing different strains, sometimes we’ll get more than one variation that we find desirable. Sometimes we’ll even get recessive traits that will just kind of pop out that are unique and new and interesting from that seed line.

What we do is we make those selections and then we start breeding against those multiple different lines. And that ability to follow what we think is agronomically interesting, as well as what smells interesting and looks like it’ll be an impactful plant, is the consequence of variety. From everything we plant, we end up with anywhere from maybe one to five varieties, depending on where it is in regards to breeding. As we stabilize those individual things, they become an individual particular strain, but maybe earlier on generationally, there was a point where they branched off into three different strains.

ES: How fragile are these genetic lines? If you’re not dialed in as a breeder, is it possible to lose some of the traits that you’re actually trying to select for?

KA: Like all genetic traits, you have dominant and recessive traits. And I won’t suggest to say we know enough about plant yet to say definitively, but it seems like some plants act as better platforms. A lot of times, those are agronomic traits—the structure of the plant, the shape of the plant, the shape of the bud. When we find those good platforms, they generally tend to pick up aromatic traits from other plants more easily. But there are certain aromatic traits—Banana OG is a really great example where there’s almost a standard banana-type smell, green banana-type smell and then the overripe, sugary, almost candied banana smell. Those three smells, while you get variation between the three, they’re very fleeting. When you breed it against other things, there are only very few strains that seem to be able to be bred against it.

The same thing happens when you breed it against itself, depending on how stable it is and depending on which plant shows which expression. So, yes, some strains do more of that and some strains do less of that. The thing that is true of all breeding, especially with where we are in the plant’s life, is that they are all fragile to some degree, if you’re not being mindful about making the selections and doing your due diligence in the field. Even just the wrong selection can lead to you losing an incredible aroma profile or something else that you might’ve found interesting.

ES: What’s the bar that you’re trying to clear with these genetics? Meaning, what does it take for a certain stable line to make the cut and get out into the consumer marketplace?

KA: The biggest thing is plant health, obviously. The plant has to be healthy throughout its whole life. We don’t look to plants that are weak in the beginning of their life. From there, it’s mostly on the aromatic qualities and the quality of the oil production. And when I say the quality, obviously with the aromatics it’s more a desirability factor. With cannabis, that can come across as a lot of different notes. Some people like the skunk, the funk, the dank. Other people are looking particularly toward fruity flavors or things that are more familiar to them—things like lemons or orange or berry. If we think that it meets any one of multiple criteria for what we think is good aroma, that’s one of the bigger drivers for moving it forward.

As far as good oil production, obviously if we’re going to keep the genetics moving forward we’d like something that’s abundant in resins. But also what we’re looking for is stuff that just produces good resin heads and abundant production of terpene so that we can collect those more readily. As long as it’s smells good and it’s producing a fair amount of oil, we generally push it through and then let the consumers to some degree provide feedback based on sell-through and other metrics. What we do if some things get moved forward into the market and there’s less of a response, those things never end up coming back. With other things, if we see a huge groundswell of support, we’ll know early on to try and refocus energies around that.

There’s a lot of hedging and making our own guesses on what we think will be popular. Like fashion, what’s trendy in the cannabis space seems to be cyclical. Anything that was popular a couple of years ago could likely be popular a few years into the future. Same with novelty. Where we have certain strains today, it’s very likely that we’ll have new strains with new aromatic qualities that we’ve never even thought of in a few years.

Brian Walker/Courtesy of Raw Garden

ES: You mentioned resin content, but are there certain traits or certain types of traits that end up making a cultivar or a family of cultivars better suited for the concentrates/vape form as opposed to just straight flower?

KA: Structure is a big one, as well as mold resistance and insect resistance. This goes back to the health of the plant. Mold resistance, in particular, and bug resistance are traits that the plants pick up—and these aren’t just passive traits. They have more to do with things like terpene and oil production. More resinous plants with certain volatile, aromatic compounds tend to repel bugs. Similarly, good structure and the right kind of spacing and not overly leafy plants act as better barriers to moisture, which subsequently results in more mold resistance. The thing that’s kind of funny, and I don’t know if it’s a term everyone recognizes, but we generally refer to buds that are kind of large and oversized as larfy, and they’re considered undesirable.

It refers to poor structure. Those kinds of larfier, bigger buds that don’t have great bag appeal for a finished flower, but their calyx structure is slightly more open and they have a more resinous appearance than their bagged flower counterpart, those are actually one of the more desirable traits that we try and look for. It’s not the most important, as we really are looking at aromatics and oil production as the most important, but these structural differences where they would be completely undesirable with bagged flower actually allow for more surface area for the extraction process. They’re just great plants to extract against or to make hash with. We do look for tighter structure and better calyx separation for different kinds of buds for plant health, especially in the breeding program. We produce all of our seeds in-house, so plants that don’t have too much leaf on them make less work for the field team.

ES: Looking at the strains list on the Raw Garden website, of course, there’s are a lot on here that are very well established—some crosses and familiar names. But as these unique strains are being created by Raw Garden, how do the naming conventions work?

KA: We do a lot of strains that are very well-known and pre-existing, but even with those strains we generally work on inbred lines. We’ll take, say, a Gorilla Glue female and another Gorilla Glue female, and we’ll turn one of those into a pollinating plant and then breed that back against the Gorilla Glue females so that we can produce seeds from it. Depending on the stability of the genetics, it just starts the whole process of selection. Less secure genetics or less well-defined genetics will generally tend to range and require a lot more selection. If we’re moving forward genetics, especially in the inbred fashion from people that have done some of the work already, we like to keep those names as close to that as possible.

I only mention that because it does feed into the rest of the naming convention. So, obviously, if it comes from an inbred line and it’s reflective of something in the market, we call it that name. If it’s something from an inbred line that throws something completely random that is not reflective of what’s in the market, we usually look to a name that somehow calls out the parentage or shows an association with that parentage.

From there, as we go out into cross-breeding and other things, it depends on how many times the plant’s been worked. If the plant is in an early iteration of being crossed, we generally look for names inside of that strain’s name and use parental naming constructs to come up with a name. Maybe Purple Punch and Jack Herer would become Jack Punch. But say that we’ve bred Jack Herer and Purple Punch together multiple times, and from the Jack Punch and the Jack Herer we get something that tastes completely different, that may become something derivative where we get into the world of maybe a little bit more fun—or we try and play off the name that we came to from that parental construct.

The other thing that’s cool is when the plants are very similar but we think that there’s just slight variation, we do what most breeders do, which is we just add a number. Even GG4 is just a reflection of someone’s favorite cut. 

When we get further out on generational stuff and we’re more into the weeds and we’re in places where maybe we’ve got five or six things crossing back against three other things, we generally tend to kind of lean on three different pillars.

If it has a very distinct taste that our team can smell and call out, we generally like to use some sort of flavor descriptor to be a clear indicator to people that this is going to have some amount of citrus or cherry or berry. I’m very particular that it has to be apparent. You have to be able to smell it and feel like it’s there in order for us to use the clear flavor descriptor in the naming. If that doesn’t work—if we feel like the flavor is distinct and interesting, but maybe hard to put your finger on—then we started going to kind of more experience or emotional type of thing. We try and think of the energy of the experience. If it’s a really fruity kind of light, fun smell, then maybe we’re going to call it Island Splash or Tropical Mist or something that feels like it calls out the energy and the flavors that we’re tasting.

The last one, which I would say probably makes up less than 5% of our strains, is just the completely random thing that isn’t necessarily driven off of anything, but we just think that this tastes so amazing and that this is such a rare unicorm that we’ve got to come up with something cooler than just smashing mom and dad’s names together. It’s just that special and that impactful, and we’ll come up with a fun name, like Pink Pegasus or something to that degree, which we just think has a lot of fun energy.

ES: Looking ahead to the summer, is there anything in particular that might be new coming up at Raw Garden or anything that you’d want to highlight?

KA: We’ve just released our crushed diamonds, which are just a phenomenal opportunity for people to try our concentrates and our wide array of aromatics and flavors. It’s a THCA isolate. The crushed diamonds have perfume-quality terpenes from our live resin extract. You get this beautiful aromatic experience. You can sprinkle it on a joint if you’re not really a dabber, or you can throw it on top of a bowl, or you can dab it the traditional way.

Some of the strains that we have coming, like our Wedding Breath—or one of my favorites that we’ve had for a while now, that’s really gotten stabilized, is our Funk N Fire, which is Leroy OG, which is a nice gassy strain and then Gorilla Glue 4, which has that chemical solvent taste, and you mix the two together and it’s just like all funk and gas. For me, it’s a really great representation of those heritage aromas that we like.

We’ve got one coming that doesn’t have a name yet, and so we’ll let the hype build a little bit behind it, but it has notes of black licorice or anise. The plant has this limitless capacity to surprise. Every year, we keep finding aromas that we didn’t expect.

 

Early on, there was a lot of investment there, as a consequence of that striving for accessibility and quality. The only way we can make it accessible is by exploiting efficiencies, which is what farmers traditionally do. And then the high quality really comes from that ability to control the farmed product, rather than having somebody else to it for you.

ES: What does an in-house breeding program allow Raw Garden to do when it comes to interacting with the customer or responding to customer sales trends?

KA: The really cool thing about it is that it almost allots you every opportunity—albeit at a huge expense, mostly in time and energy. What we do is try and follow consumer trends and breed for things that are popular, but we also hedge our bets and utilize our program as an opportunity to hold on to legacy strains or heritage strains that we feel are important things that people will want to come back to. It allows us the ability to plant seeds rather than clones. That allows for an amazing efficiency, not only from a business perspective, but also just in the plants’ production or productiveness. When we plant seeds, we get a good, strong taproot. The subsequent benefits of that are a much more vigorous plant. With clones, oftentimes you get a very repeatable product, but there are sensitivities around when the cutting is taken and the quality of the cutting.

By breeding, we’re really trying to breed for farmable seed that are semi-homogenous, if not homogenous. They give us repeatable aromatic bouquets, but also repeatable agronomic traits that make it easier to farm and easier to harvest. When I say easier to harvest, the uniformity of the crop allows for uniform maturation, which means that you can uniformly harvest. When you have a lot of the variation, so too is there variation in the maturity. So that becomes a big issue.

The biggest thing that it allows us is to drive diversity and assortment. If you think about it, most cannabis producers, especially on a smaller scale, ourselves included at many parts of our iterative cycles, rely on clones.

Clones are really when somebody is taking a bag of seeds and planting them, it’s their favorite plant or the plant that performed or smelled or looked the best to them. So, they select that plant and they make cuttings from it. As a consequence, they end up with a very uniform plant that is needing to be managed in order to keep it in and continue to move forward its progeny. But when you planted those seeds, there were less desirable or different strains that were not selected against for whichever reason. What we find a lot of times nowadays with better genetics is that sometimes breeders will have more than one favorite out of a bag of seeds.

ES: The possibilities seem immense.

KA: A great example is that we were known early on for our Slymer strain, which is an F1 phenotype from Chernobyl, which is from Subcool seeds. They would acknowledge that they have what they would call the Golden Ticket, which was this Slymer phenotype, which for Chernobyl is generally a lemon/chem type of flavor. The Slymer was a very clear lime flavor. So, both of these things were coming out of the same seed line, and it just really depended which expression you got. Similarly, when we’re breeding, back-breeding or crossing different strains, sometimes we’ll get more than one variation that we find desirable. Sometimes we’ll even get recessive traits that will just kind of pop out that are unique and new and interesting from that seed line.

What we do is we make those selections and then we start breeding against those multiple different lines. And that ability to follow what we think is agronomically interesting, as well as what smells interesting and looks like it’ll be an impactful plant, is the consequence of variety. From everything we plant, we end up with anywhere from maybe one to five varieties, depending on where it is in regards to breeding. As we stabilize those individual things, they become an individual particular strain, but maybe earlier on generationally, there was a point where they branched off into three different strains.

ES: How fragile are these genetic lines? If you’re not dialed in as a breeder, is it possible to lose some of the traits that you’re actually trying to select for?

KA: Like all genetic traits, you have dominant and recessive traits. And I won’t suggest to say we know enough about plant yet to say definitively, but it seems like some plants act as better platforms. A lot of times, those are agronomic traits—the structure of the plant, the shape of the plant, the shape of the bud. When we find those good platforms, they generally tend to pick up aromatic traits from other plants more easily. But there are certain aromatic traits—Banana OG is a really great example where there’s almost a standard banana-type smell, green banana-type smell and then the overripe, sugary, almost candied banana smell. Those three smells, while you get variation between the three, they’re very fleeting. When you breed it against other things, there are only very few strains that seem to be able to be bred against it.

The same thing happens when you breed it against itself, depending on how stable it is and depending on which plant shows which expression. So, yes, some strains do more of that and some strains do less of that. The thing that is true of all breeding, especially with where we are in the plant’s life, is that they are all fragile to some degree, if you’re not being mindful about making the selections and doing your due diligence in the field. Even just the wrong selection can lead to you losing an incredible aroma profile or something else that you might’ve found interesting.

ES: What’s the bar that you’re trying to clear with these genetics? Meaning, what does it take for a certain stable line to make the cut and get out into the consumer marketplace?

KA: The biggest thing is plant health, obviously. The plant has to be healthy throughout its whole life. We don’t look to plants that are weak in the beginning of their life. From there, it’s mostly on the aromatic qualities and the quality of the oil production. And when I say the quality, obviously with the aromatics it’s more a desirability factor. With cannabis, that can come across as a lot of different notes. Some people like the skunk, the funk, the dank. Other people are looking particularly toward fruity flavors or things that are more familiar to them—things like lemons or orange or berry. If we think that it meets any one of multiple criteria for what we think is good aroma, that’s one of the bigger drivers for moving it forward.

As far as good oil production, obviously if we’re going to keep the genetics moving forward we’d like something that’s abundant in resins. But also what we’re looking for is stuff that just produces good resin heads and abundant production of terpene so that we can collect those more readily. As long as it’s smells good and it’s producing a fair amount of oil, we generally push it through and then let the consumers to some degree provide feedback based on sell-through and other metrics. What we do if some things get moved forward into the market and there’s less of a response, those things never end up coming back. With other things, if we see a huge groundswell of support, we’ll know early on to try and refocus energies around that.

There’s a lot of hedging and making our own guesses on what we think will be popular. Like fashion, what’s trendy in the cannabis space seems to be cyclical. Anything that was popular a couple of years ago could likely be popular a few years into the future. Same with novelty. Where we have certain strains today, it’s very likely that we’ll have new strains with new aromatic qualities that we’ve never even thought of in a few years.

Brian Walker/Courtesy of Raw Garden

ES: You mentioned resin content, but are there certain traits or certain types of traits that end up making a cultivar or a family of cultivars better suited for the concentrates/vape form as opposed to just straight flower?

KA: Structure is a big one, as well as mold resistance and insect resistance. This goes back to the health of the plant. Mold resistance, in particular, and bug resistance are traits that the plants pick up—and these aren’t just passive traits. They have more to do with things like terpene and oil production. More resinous plants with certain volatile, aromatic compounds tend to repel bugs. Similarly, good structure and the right kind of spacing and not overly leafy plants act as better barriers to moisture, which subsequently results in more mold resistance. The thing that’s kind of funny, and I don’t know if it’s a term everyone recognizes, but we generally refer to buds that are kind of large and oversized as larfy, and they’re considered undesirable.

It refers to poor structure. Those kinds of larfier, bigger buds that don’t have great bag appeal for a finished flower, but their calyx structure is slightly more open and they have a more resinous appearance than their bagged flower counterpart, those are actually one of the more desirable traits that we try and look for. It’s not the most important, as we really are looking at aromatics and oil production as the most important, but these structural differences where they would be completely undesirable with bagged flower actually allow for more surface area for the extraction process. They’re just great plants to extract against or to make hash with. We do look for tighter structure and better calyx separation for different kinds of buds for plant health, especially in the breeding program. We produce all of our seeds in-house, so plants that don’t have too much leaf on them make less work for the field team.

ES: Looking at the strains list on the Raw Garden website, of course, there’s are a lot on here that are very well established—some crosses and familiar names. But as these unique strains are being created by Raw Garden, how do the naming conventions work?

KA: We do a lot of strains that are very well-known and pre-existing, but even with those strains we generally work on inbred lines. We’ll take, say, a Gorilla Glue female and another Gorilla Glue female, and we’ll turn one of those into a pollinating plant and then breed that back against the Gorilla Glue females so that we can produce seeds from it. Depending on the stability of the genetics, it just starts the whole process of selection. Less secure genetics or less well-defined genetics will generally tend to range and require a lot more selection. If we’re moving forward genetics, especially in the inbred fashion from people that have done some of the work already, we like to keep those names as close to that as possible.

I only mention that because it does feed into the rest of the naming convention. So, obviously, if it comes from an inbred line and it’s reflective of something in the market, we call it that name. If it’s something from an inbred line that throws something completely random that is not reflective of what’s in the market, we usually look to a name that somehow calls out the parentage or shows an association with that parentage.

From there, as we go out into cross-breeding and other things, it depends on how many times the plant’s been worked. If the plant is in an early iteration of being crossed, we generally look for names inside of that strain’s name and use parental naming constructs to come up with a name. Maybe Purple Punch and Jack Herer would become Jack Punch. But say that we’ve bred Jack Herer and Purple Punch together multiple times, and from the Jack Punch and the Jack Herer we get something that tastes completely different, that may become something derivative where we get into the world of maybe a little bit more fun—or we try and play off the name that we came to from that parental construct.

The other thing that’s cool is when the plants are very similar but we think that there’s just slight variation, we do what most breeders do, which is we just add a number. Even GG4 is just a reflection of someone’s favorite cut. 

When we get further out on generational stuff and we’re more into the weeds and we’re in places where maybe we’ve got five or six things crossing back against three other things, we generally tend to kind of lean on three different pillars.

If it has a very distinct taste that our team can smell and call out, we generally like to use some sort of flavor descriptor to be a clear indicator to people that this is going to have some amount of citrus or cherry or berry. I’m very particular that it has to be apparent. You have to be able to smell it and feel like it’s there in order for us to use the clear flavor descriptor in the naming. If that doesn’t work—if we feel like the flavor is distinct and interesting, but maybe hard to put your finger on—then we started going to kind of more experience or emotional type of thing. We try and think of the energy of the experience. If it’s a really fruity kind of light, fun smell, then maybe we’re going to call it Island Splash or Tropical Mist or something that feels like it calls out the energy and the flavors that we’re tasting.

The last one, which I would say probably makes up less than 5% of our strains, is just the completely random thing that isn’t necessarily driven off of anything, but we just think that this tastes so amazing and that this is such a rare unicorm that we’ve got to come up with something cooler than just smashing mom and dad’s names together. It’s just that special and that impactful, and we’ll come up with a fun name, like Pink Pegasus or something to that degree, which we just think has a lot of fun energy.

ES: Looking ahead to the summer, is there anything in particular that might be new coming up at Raw Garden or anything that you’d want to highlight?

KA: We’ve just released our crushed diamonds, which are just a phenomenal opportunity for people to try our concentrates and our wide array of aromatics and flavors. It’s a THCA isolate. The crushed diamonds have perfume-quality terpenes from our live resin extract. You get this beautiful aromatic experience. You can sprinkle it on a joint if you’re not really a dabber, or you can throw it on top of a bowl, or you can dab it the traditional way.

Some of the strains that we have coming, like our Wedding Breath—or one of my favorites that we’ve had for a while now, that’s really gotten stabilized, is our Funk N Fire, which is Leroy OG, which is a nice gassy strain and then Gorilla Glue 4, which has that chemical solvent taste, and you mix the two together and it’s just like all funk and gas. For me, it’s a really great representation of those heritage aromas that we like.

We’ve got one coming that doesn’t have a name yet, and so we’ll let the hype build a little bit behind it, but it has notes of black licorice or anise. The plant has this limitless capacity to surprise. Every year, we keep finding aromas that we didn’t expect.