Cannabis News

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Not only are the illegal growers threatening wildlife and water supplies for local residents, but they’ve threatened and intimidated the locals themselves, U.S. Congressman Mike Garcia said during the press conference. Garcia represents California’s 25th District, which encompasses the majority of LA County’s northern region, including the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

“When I first heard about this problem at the beginning of this year, it was one of these things that you couldn’t believe it until you actually saw it,” he said. “I ended up going flying with the local sheriffs out in Palmdale in April. I saw it from the air at the time. There were roughly 400 to 500 of these illegal nurseries in the local area, and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.”

After he landed, Garcia said he took a 25-minute drive to Pearblossom, an unincorporated community of roughly 2,500 people, where he held a townhall with local residents. The testimonies Garcia heard from those locals were absolutely tragic, he said. They were being threatened on a daily basis by bad actors and cartel members with weapons, he said.

“While I was at this townhall, we had a member of the cartel, an armed member of the cartel, in the front row,” Garcia said. “He was there to send a clear message, not to me, but to the residents that talking to elected officials about this problem was a bad idea. He was there to intimidate.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

Before last month’s operation, the illegal growers in the Antelope Valley faced zero risk and a substantial reward of up to $15 billion harvested from the High Desert on an annual basis, Garcia said.

While the sting operation resulted in the seizure of harvested cannabis and plants worth roughly $1.2 billion, investigators said that the operation accounted for only 40% of the illegal outdoor grows in the county, where up to four harvests per year can materialize. If those illicit grows went uninterrupted by law enforcement, LA County alone would have shadowed the state-legal market, which brought in $4.4 billion of retail sales in 2020.

“After this operation, we were able to rebalance the risk-versus-reward matrix, and we need to continue to make sure that the risks are unlimited and the reward is absolutely zero for these cartel members,” Garcia said.

Continued efforts are all about reclaiming the county for the residents of the Antelope Valley, Villanueva said.

Founded in 1850, the LA County Sheriff’s Department was the first professional police force in the Los Angeles area and worked to tame the lawlessness of the county over 150 years ago, he said. The department shouldn’t have to try and re-tame it again to regain a sense of law and order for a civil society, he said, but that’s what it’s had to do.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

When Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris took the podium during the press conference, he picked up one of the 33 confiscated firearms from a nearby display table and pointed it in the direction of media members.

“This is the cartels,” he said. “We are very, very close to driving down the freeway and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what’s coming. And if you have any doubt, our citizens have to look at this part of the gun; not this part.”

Parris set the gun back down on the table and said the cartel members are even walking into people’s homes to intimidate them.

Later in his remarks, Parris lightened the tone when talking about Lancaster lending its tractors and construction equipment that were used to tear down the illegal cultivation sites. “I got to ride one; it was great fun,” he said.

Continuing Efforts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Although many of the 131 individuals arrested were armed, Villanueva said they showed little resistance. Before the operation, the illegal farmers’ biggest threat was actually being ripped off by other cartels stealing their harvests, he said.

“We didn’t meet any really resistance at all, because typically when we showed up at one of the grows, everyone just took off into the desert running or they surrendered,” Villanueva said. “We didn’t get a lot of resistance.

“No one got away, for the record. Every single person that we put our eyes on is in custody.”

The 22 felony and 109 misdemeanor arrests have been filed with LA County District Attorney George Gascón’s office for consideration, Villanueva said. However, the sheriff did not offer overwhelming faith in the DA’s office.

“We have been very disheartened by the district attorney not filing on our cases for human trafficking when it comes to sex crimes and prostitution,” Villanueva said. “So now we’re going to present this and see what the district attorney will do, but hopefully he’ll do the right thing.”

With the district attorney’s decision out of his hands, Villanueva said his department will focus on eradicating the other 300-some sites investigators identified during their aerial reconnaissance. Last month’s operation cost about $1 million, he said. During the second week of the operation, his department had to scrounge around to pay for the gasoline involved in the eradication efforts, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

To help future efforts, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the 5th District on the five-member LA County Board of Supervisors, said she’s going to provide the sheriff’s department discretionary funding through her district allocation.

Further funding from the county was blocked by the majority of the supervisors, Parris said. That’s why Lancaster’s city equipment was used 17 miles outside of its jurisdiction, he said.

Last month, Barger’s office allocated $100,000 to the operation, she said during the press conference. Beyond that, the eradication efforts need to be more than an episodic position, she said.

“I have told my colleagues it’s only a matter of time before it leaves the Antelope Valley and hits down below,” she said. “What began as water theft has exploded to become the infiltration of organized crime groups in the Antelope Valley who are operating internationally.

“This illegal activity is impacting the quality of life for residents and businesses, and if left unaddressed, will have long-lasting and devastating effects in the region.”

As the illicit market continues to thrive throughout California, the outdoor operations in the Antelope Valley are the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s primarily focus because they are the most visible, Villanueva said.

Meanwhile, the cartels are gobbling up cash-only real estate transactions, sometimes buying up entire neighborhoods of residential homes, and gutting the interiors to convert them into indoor grows, he said.

“So, you can see them starting to shift their operations to indoors,” Villanueva said. “That’s the next logical step for these illegal cartels.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

More than 400 law enforcement personnel from city, county, state and federal agencies seized $1.2 billion of illegal cannabis harvests and plants in Southern California during a 10-day eradication operation resulting in 131 arrests last month.

Despite exhausting human and financial resources during the operation, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is still calling the largest operation in his department’s history part of an ongoing whack-a-mole game because more than half of the illicit cultivation practices on his team’s radar remain operational in the Antelope Valley of the High Desert, he said.

“The beauty of it is, they can’t hide,” he said in a press conference held July 7. “We see them. We’re going to come after them. It’s hard work. But with the resources, we’re going to get to all 100 percent of them. We got about 40 percent of them we addressed. We’ve got 60 percent to go.”

Operation personnel served search warrants at 205 locations. In the weeks leading up to the operation, investigators conducted reconnaissance flights and surveyed approximately 70% of all the available lands in the Antelope Valley—a region in northern LA County and the southeastern portion of Kern County, which constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. During their flights, the investigators identified more than 500 illegal cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said.

Cannabis Business Times

In addition to the arrests—22 of which include felony charges—the sting operation seized and destroyed approximately 372,000 plants, 33,480 pounds of harvested cannabis, 65 vehicles, including two water trucks, 33 firearms and $28,000 in cash that was for one day’s payroll, Villanueva said. The eradication operation ran from June 8-18.

The majority of those arrested were undocumented persons, Villanueva said. Many of the illegal grows have been directly tied to Mexican drug trafficking organizations as well as Asian and Armenian organized crime groups, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

“What we want to do is send a clear and loud message to the cartels and anyone doing an illegal operation in the high desert,” Villanueva said. “Your days are over and we’re coming for you.”

While investigators said they identified more than 500 illegal outdoor cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said there are as many as 860 illegal grows in neighboring San Bernardino County to the east, while Kern County to the north, Riverside County to the southeast and Ventura County to the west are also experiencing illegal operations.

“Well, this is a whack-a-mole game,” the sheriff said. “[San Bernardino County has] a lot less resources in terms of personnel than we do, so this is at least, on the grow side, this is a five-county problem that we need to resolve, and it’s going to take manpower. We have the ability, the willingness, the technical know-how, the expertise—what we’re always short on is the resources to get the people employed.”

Sheriffs’ department members from Kern, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties were among the 400-plus personnel involved in the LA County operation. Also collaborating on the operation were deputies from the Community Partnerships Bureau; Safe Street and Special Victims Bureau detectives; cities of Lancaster and Palmdale station deputies; Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents; the California National Guard; and California Department of Fish and Wildlife agents. Water theft enforcement teams made 19 additional arrests.

Environmental Impacts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Water theft continues to threaten the water supply for residents in the eastern portion of the Antelope Valley, leaving many of the region’s potato, alfalfa and carrot farmers without a necessary resource, Villanueva said. The theft occurs from fire hydrants and unpermitted water wells that were being drilled on the grow sites.

“Most Californians would be shocked and disappointed at the amount of water these unlicensed, illegal grows are using, especially as California suffers from a drought,” DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Curt Fallin said in the LA County Sheriff’s Department press release.  “By our calculation, the illegal grows in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties require an astounding 5.4 million gallons of water a day, every day.”

On July 8, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to voluntarily cut back on household water consumption by 15% compared with last year, as he expanded his regional drought state of emergency to apply to 50 counties, or roughly 42% of the state’s population, Los Angeles Times reported.

The water theft by illegal cannabis growers is part of an effort to irrigate each plant up to 3 gallons of water per day in the High Desert, according to Eric Lindberg, the senior engineering geologist and chief of the South Coast Cannabis Regulatory Unit, who represented the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board during the July 7 press conference.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Unregulated cannabis cultivation operations often allow fertilizers, pesticides, petroleum fuels, sediment, irrigation tailwater, trash and human waste to be released into the environment and to pollute waters of the state, Lindberg said. And illegal diversions of surface water for cultivation drains lakes and streams, he said.

“In many cases, illegal pesticides are found at illicit cannabis cultivation sites,” Lindberg said. “Many of these pesticides are banned for use in the United States because they’re highly toxic to humans and animals. Illegal pesticides can contaminate the soil, service water and ground water, and are easily mobilized by stormwater runoff.

“Pesticides used to exterminate insects, rodents, mold and weeds can move up the food chain and can cause secondary poising and mortality of pets and other animals. These pesticides can also contaminate our drinking water supplies.”

Threat to Wildlife

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

During the 10-day operation, enforcement personnel also rescued 180 animals, including 84 dogs, many of which are up for adoption.

In addition, two dead bears were discovered nearby the illegal grow sites. Their deaths we directly attributed to pesticide use, according to the sheriff’s release.

Chloe Hakim, a biologist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife Region 5, as well as the lead scientist for the Los Angeles County regional department, said during the press conference that both scientific and enforcement action are needed to stop illegal grows and to mitigate their negative impacts.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Focused on protecting the diverse plant, fish and wildlife resources for their ecological value, and the habitat they depend upon, Hakim said seeing first-hand what the illegal grow sites have done to surrounding habitats has been tragic. During her field assessments, Hakim said she observed substantial alterations to streams from sediment buildups attributed to illegal cultivations through grading that can cause death and abnormalities to aquatic species, as well as stream crossing that cause fish impediment and other harms to nearby plants and wildlife.

Trash, illegal pesticides and illegal fertilizers also do harm, she said.

“Just a quarter teaspoon of carbofuran, which is an illegal pesticide that some illegal growers use, can kill a bear,” she said. “And you can only imagine what that can do to us humans when the sheriffs come across [it] and they’re picking out the weed, and biologists of our agency come across and they step by this pesticide. This is something that is important to resolve and important to get ahead and completely eradicate this kind of an issue.”

Some of the region’s critical species that need their habitats protected to thrive and survive include the Mohave ground squirrel, desert tortoise and Swainson’s hawk, as well as Joshua trees, which are protected under California state law, but illegal cultivators have cut them down to build their hoop houses.

Intimidating Local Residents

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Not only are the illegal growers threatening wildlife and water supplies for local residents, but they’ve threatened and intimidated the locals themselves, U.S. Congressman Mike Garcia said during the press conference. Garcia represents California’s 25th District, which encompasses the majority of LA County’s northern region, including the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

“When I first heard about this problem at the beginning of this year, it was one of these things that you couldn’t believe it until you actually saw it,” he said. “I ended up going flying with the local sheriffs out in Palmdale in April. I saw it from the air at the time. There were roughly 400 to 500 of these illegal nurseries in the local area, and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.”

After he landed, Garcia said he took a 25-minute drive to Pearblossom, an unincorporated community of roughly 2,500 people, where he held a townhall with local residents. The testimonies Garcia heard from those locals were absolutely tragic, he said. They were being threatened on a daily basis by bad actors and cartel members with weapons, he said.

“While I was at this townhall, we had a member of the cartel, an armed member of the cartel, in the front row,” Garcia said. “He was there to send a clear message, not to me, but to the residents that talking to elected officials about this problem was a bad idea. He was there to intimidate.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

Before last month’s operation, the illegal growers in the Antelope Valley faced zero risk and a substantial reward of up to $15 billion harvested from the High Desert on an annual basis, Garcia said.

While the sting operation resulted in the seizure of harvested cannabis and plants worth roughly $1.2 billion, investigators said that the operation accounted for only 40% of the illegal outdoor grows in the county, where up to four harvests per year can materialize. If those illicit grows went uninterrupted by law enforcement, LA County alone would have shadowed the state-legal market, which brought in $4.4 billion of retail sales in 2020.

“After this operation, we were able to rebalance the risk-versus-reward matrix, and we need to continue to make sure that the risks are unlimited and the reward is absolutely zero for these cartel members,” Garcia said.

Continued efforts are all about reclaiming the county for the residents of the Antelope Valley, Villanueva said.

Founded in 1850, the LA County Sheriff’s Department was the first professional police force in the Los Angeles area and worked to tame the lawlessness of the county over 150 years ago, he said. The department shouldn’t have to try and re-tame it again to regain a sense of law and order for a civil society, he said, but that’s what it’s had to do.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

When Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris took the podium during the press conference, he picked up one of the 33 confiscated firearms from a nearby display table and pointed it in the direction of media members.

“This is the cartels,” he said. “We are very, very close to driving down the freeway and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what’s coming. And if you have any doubt, our citizens have to look at this part of the gun; not this part.”

Parris set the gun back down on the table and said the cartel members are even walking into people’s homes to intimidate them.

Later in his remarks, Parris lightened the tone when talking about Lancaster lending its tractors and construction equipment that were used to tear down the illegal cultivation sites. “I got to ride one; it was great fun,” he said.

Continuing Efforts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Although many of the 131 individuals arrested were armed, Villanueva said they showed little resistance. Before the operation, the illegal farmers’ biggest threat was actually being ripped off by other cartels stealing their harvests, he said.

“We didn’t meet any really resistance at all, because typically when we showed up at one of the grows, everyone just took off into the desert running or they surrendered,” Villanueva said. “We didn’t get a lot of resistance.

“No one got away, for the record. Every single person that we put our eyes on is in custody.”

The 22 felony and 109 misdemeanor arrests have been filed with LA County District Attorney George Gascón’s office for consideration, Villanueva said. However, the sheriff did not offer overwhelming faith in the DA’s office.

“We have been very disheartened by the district attorney not filing on our cases for human trafficking when it comes to sex crimes and prostitution,” Villanueva said. “So now we’re going to present this and see what the district attorney will do, but hopefully he’ll do the right thing.”

With the district attorney’s decision out of his hands, Villanueva said his department will focus on eradicating the other 300-some sites investigators identified during their aerial reconnaissance. Last month’s operation cost about $1 million, he said. During the second week of the operation, his department had to scrounge around to pay for the gasoline involved in the eradication efforts, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

To help future efforts, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the 5th District on the five-member LA County Board of Supervisors, said she’s going to provide the sheriff’s department discretionary funding through her district allocation.

Further funding from the county was blocked by the majority of the supervisors, Parris said. That’s why Lancaster’s city equipment was used 17 miles outside of its jurisdiction, he said.

Last month, Barger’s office allocated $100,000 to the operation, she said during the press conference. Beyond that, the eradication efforts need to be more than an episodic position, she said.

“I have told my colleagues it’s only a matter of time before it leaves the Antelope Valley and hits down below,” she said. “What began as water theft has exploded to become the infiltration of organized crime groups in the Antelope Valley who are operating internationally.

“This illegal activity is impacting the quality of life for residents and businesses, and if left unaddressed, will have long-lasting and devastating effects in the region.”

As the illicit market continues to thrive throughout California, the outdoor operations in the Antelope Valley are the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s primarily focus because they are the most visible, Villanueva said.

Meanwhile, the cartels are gobbling up cash-only real estate transactions, sometimes buying up entire neighborhoods of residential homes, and gutting the interiors to convert them into indoor grows, he said.

“So, you can see them starting to shift their operations to indoors,” Villanueva said. “That’s the next logical step for these illegal cartels.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

More than 400 law enforcement personnel from city, county, state and federal agencies seized $1.2 billion of illegal cannabis harvests and plants in Southern California during a 10-day eradication operation resulting in 131 arrests last month.

Despite exhausting human and financial resources during the operation, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is still calling the largest operation in his department’s history part of an ongoing whack-a-mole game because more than half of the illicit cultivation practices on his team’s radar remain operational in the Antelope Valley of the High Desert, he said.

“The beauty of it is, they can’t hide,” he said in a press conference held July 7. “We see them. We’re going to come after them. It’s hard work. But with the resources, we’re going to get to all 100 percent of them. We got about 40 percent of them we addressed. We’ve got 60 percent to go.”

Operation personnel served search warrants at 205 locations. In the weeks leading up to the operation, investigators conducted reconnaissance flights and surveyed approximately 70% of all the available lands in the Antelope Valley—a region in northern LA County and the southeastern portion of Kern County, which constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. During their flights, the investigators identified more than 500 illegal cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said.

Cannabis Business Times

In addition to the arrests—22 of which include felony charges—the sting operation seized and destroyed approximately 372,000 plants, 33,480 pounds of harvested cannabis, 65 vehicles, including two water trucks, 33 firearms and $28,000 in cash that was for one day’s payroll, Villanueva said. The eradication operation ran from June 8-18.

The majority of those arrested were undocumented persons, Villanueva said. Many of the illegal grows have been directly tied to Mexican drug trafficking organizations as well as Asian and Armenian organized crime groups, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

“What we want to do is send a clear and loud message to the cartels and anyone doing an illegal operation in the high desert,” Villanueva said. “Your days are over and we’re coming for you.”

While investigators said they identified more than 500 illegal outdoor cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said there are as many as 860 illegal grows in neighboring San Bernardino County to the east, while Kern County to the north, Riverside County to the southeast and Ventura County to the west are also experiencing illegal operations.

“Well, this is a whack-a-mole game,” the sheriff said. “[San Bernardino County has] a lot less resources in terms of personnel than we do, so this is at least, on the grow side, this is a five-county problem that we need to resolve, and it’s going to take manpower. We have the ability, the willingness, the technical know-how, the expertise—what we’re always short on is the resources to get the people employed.”

Sheriffs’ department members from Kern, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties were among the 400-plus personnel involved in the LA County operation. Also collaborating on the operation were deputies from the Community Partnerships Bureau; Safe Street and Special Victims Bureau detectives; cities of Lancaster and Palmdale station deputies; Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents; the California National Guard; and California Department of Fish and Wildlife agents. Water theft enforcement teams made 19 additional arrests.

Environmental Impacts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Water theft continues to threaten the water supply for residents in the eastern portion of the Antelope Valley, leaving many of the region’s potato, alfalfa and carrot farmers without a necessary resource, Villanueva said. The theft occurs from fire hydrants and unpermitted water wells that were being drilled on the grow sites.

“Most Californians would be shocked and disappointed at the amount of water these unlicensed, illegal grows are using, especially as California suffers from a drought,” DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Curt Fallin said in the LA County Sheriff’s Department press release.  “By our calculation, the illegal grows in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties require an astounding 5.4 million gallons of water a day, every day.”

On July 8, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to voluntarily cut back on household water consumption by 15% compared with last year, as he expanded his regional drought state of emergency to apply to 50 counties, or roughly 42% of the state’s population, Los Angeles Times reported.

The water theft by illegal cannabis growers is part of an effort to irrigate each plant up to 3 gallons of water per day in the High Desert, according to Eric Lindberg, the senior engineering geologist and chief of the South Coast Cannabis Regulatory Unit, who represented the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board during the July 7 press conference.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Unregulated cannabis cultivation operations often allow fertilizers, pesticides, petroleum fuels, sediment, irrigation tailwater, trash and human waste to be released into the environment and to pollute waters of the state, Lindberg said. And illegal diversions of surface water for cultivation drains lakes and streams, he said.

“In many cases, illegal pesticides are found at illicit cannabis cultivation sites,” Lindberg said. “Many of these pesticides are banned for use in the United States because they’re highly toxic to humans and animals. Illegal pesticides can contaminate the soil, service water and ground water, and are easily mobilized by stormwater runoff.

“Pesticides used to exterminate insects, rodents, mold and weeds can move up the food chain and can cause secondary poising and mortality of pets and other animals. These pesticides can also contaminate our drinking water supplies.”

Threat to Wildlife

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

During the 10-day operation, enforcement personnel also rescued 180 animals, including 84 dogs, many of which are up for adoption.

In addition, two dead bears were discovered nearby the illegal grow sites. Their deaths we directly attributed to pesticide use, according to the sheriff’s release.

Chloe Hakim, a biologist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife Region 5, as well as the lead scientist for the Los Angeles County regional department, said during the press conference that both scientific and enforcement action are needed to stop illegal grows and to mitigate their negative impacts.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Focused on protecting the diverse plant, fish and wildlife resources for their ecological value, and the habitat they depend upon, Hakim said seeing first-hand what the illegal grow sites have done to surrounding habitats has been tragic. During her field assessments, Hakim said she observed substantial alterations to streams from sediment buildups attributed to illegal cultivations through grading that can cause death and abnormalities to aquatic species, as well as stream crossing that cause fish impediment and other harms to nearby plants and wildlife.

Trash, illegal pesticides and illegal fertilizers also do harm, she said.

“Just a quarter teaspoon of carbofuran, which is an illegal pesticide that some illegal growers use, can kill a bear,” she said. “And you can only imagine what that can do to us humans when the sheriffs come across [it] and they’re picking out the weed, and biologists of our agency come across and they step by this pesticide. This is something that is important to resolve and important to get ahead and completely eradicate this kind of an issue.”

Some of the region’s critical species that need their habitats protected to thrive and survive include the Mohave ground squirrel, desert tortoise and Swainson’s hawk, as well as Joshua trees, which are protected under California state law, but illegal cultivators have cut them down to build their hoop houses.

Intimidating Local Residents

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Not only are the illegal growers threatening wildlife and water supplies for local residents, but they’ve threatened and intimidated the locals themselves, U.S. Congressman Mike Garcia said during the press conference. Garcia represents California’s 25th District, which encompasses the majority of LA County’s northern region, including the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

“When I first heard about this problem at the beginning of this year, it was one of these things that you couldn’t believe it until you actually saw it,” he said. “I ended up going flying with the local sheriffs out in Palmdale in April. I saw it from the air at the time. There were roughly 400 to 500 of these illegal nurseries in the local area, and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.”

After he landed, Garcia said he took a 25-minute drive to Pearblossom, an unincorporated community of roughly 2,500 people, where he held a townhall with local residents. The testimonies Garcia heard from those locals were absolutely tragic, he said. They were being threatened on a daily basis by bad actors and cartel members with weapons, he said.

“While I was at this townhall, we had a member of the cartel, an armed member of the cartel, in the front row,” Garcia said. “He was there to send a clear message, not to me, but to the residents that talking to elected officials about this problem was a bad idea. He was there to intimidate.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

Before last month’s operation, the illegal growers in the Antelope Valley faced zero risk and a substantial reward of up to $15 billion harvested from the High Desert on an annual basis, Garcia said.

While the sting operation resulted in the seizure of harvested cannabis and plants worth roughly $1.2 billion, investigators said that the operation accounted for only 40% of the illegal outdoor grows in the county, where up to four harvests per year can materialize. If those illicit grows went uninterrupted by law enforcement, LA County alone would have shadowed the state-legal market, which brought in $4.4 billion of retail sales in 2020.

“After this operation, we were able to rebalance the risk-versus-reward matrix, and we need to continue to make sure that the risks are unlimited and the reward is absolutely zero for these cartel members,” Garcia said.

Continued efforts are all about reclaiming the county for the residents of the Antelope Valley, Villanueva said.

Founded in 1850, the LA County Sheriff’s Department was the first professional police force in the Los Angeles area and worked to tame the lawlessness of the county over 150 years ago, he said. The department shouldn’t have to try and re-tame it again to regain a sense of law and order for a civil society, he said, but that’s what it’s had to do.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

When Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris took the podium during the press conference, he picked up one of the 33 confiscated firearms from a nearby display table and pointed it in the direction of media members.

“This is the cartels,” he said. “We are very, very close to driving down the freeway and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what’s coming. And if you have any doubt, our citizens have to look at this part of the gun; not this part.”

Parris set the gun back down on the table and said the cartel members are even walking into people’s homes to intimidate them.

Later in his remarks, Parris lightened the tone when talking about Lancaster lending its tractors and construction equipment that were used to tear down the illegal cultivation sites. “I got to ride one; it was great fun,” he said.

Continuing Efforts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Although many of the 131 individuals arrested were armed, Villanueva said they showed little resistance. Before the operation, the illegal farmers’ biggest threat was actually being ripped off by other cartels stealing their harvests, he said.

“We didn’t meet any really resistance at all, because typically when we showed up at one of the grows, everyone just took off into the desert running or they surrendered,” Villanueva said. “We didn’t get a lot of resistance.

“No one got away, for the record. Every single person that we put our eyes on is in custody.”

The 22 felony and 109 misdemeanor arrests have been filed with LA County District Attorney George Gascón’s office for consideration, Villanueva said. However, the sheriff did not offer overwhelming faith in the DA’s office.

“We have been very disheartened by the district attorney not filing on our cases for human trafficking when it comes to sex crimes and prostitution,” Villanueva said. “So now we’re going to present this and see what the district attorney will do, but hopefully he’ll do the right thing.”

With the district attorney’s decision out of his hands, Villanueva said his department will focus on eradicating the other 300-some sites investigators identified during their aerial reconnaissance. Last month’s operation cost about $1 million, he said. During the second week of the operation, his department had to scrounge around to pay for the gasoline involved in the eradication efforts, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

To help future efforts, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the 5th District on the five-member LA County Board of Supervisors, said she’s going to provide the sheriff’s department discretionary funding through her district allocation.

Further funding from the county was blocked by the majority of the supervisors, Parris said. That’s why Lancaster’s city equipment was used 17 miles outside of its jurisdiction, he said.

Last month, Barger’s office allocated $100,000 to the operation, she said during the press conference. Beyond that, the eradication efforts need to be more than an episodic position, she said.

“I have told my colleagues it’s only a matter of time before it leaves the Antelope Valley and hits down below,” she said. “What began as water theft has exploded to become the infiltration of organized crime groups in the Antelope Valley who are operating internationally.

“This illegal activity is impacting the quality of life for residents and businesses, and if left unaddressed, will have long-lasting and devastating effects in the region.”

As the illicit market continues to thrive throughout California, the outdoor operations in the Antelope Valley are the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s primarily focus because they are the most visible, Villanueva said.

Meanwhile, the cartels are gobbling up cash-only real estate transactions, sometimes buying up entire neighborhoods of residential homes, and gutting the interiors to convert them into indoor grows, he said.

“So, you can see them starting to shift their operations to indoors,” Villanueva said. “That’s the next logical step for these illegal cartels.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

More than 400 law enforcement personnel from city, county, state and federal agencies seized $1.2 billion of illegal cannabis harvests and plants in Southern California during a 10-day eradication operation resulting in 131 arrests last month.

Despite exhausting human and financial resources during the operation, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is still calling the largest operation in his department’s history part of an ongoing whack-a-mole game because more than half of the illicit cultivation practices on his team’s radar remain operational in the Antelope Valley of the High Desert, he said.

“The beauty of it is, they can’t hide,” he said in a press conference held July 7. “We see them. We’re going to come after them. It’s hard work. But with the resources, we’re going to get to all 100 percent of them. We got about 40 percent of them we addressed. We’ve got 60 percent to go.”

Operation personnel served search warrants at 205 locations. In the weeks leading up to the operation, investigators conducted reconnaissance flights and surveyed approximately 70% of all the available lands in the Antelope Valley—a region in northern LA County and the southeastern portion of Kern County, which constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. During their flights, the investigators identified more than 500 illegal cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said.

Cannabis Business Times

In addition to the arrests—22 of which include felony charges—the sting operation seized and destroyed approximately 372,000 plants, 33,480 pounds of harvested cannabis, 65 vehicles, including two water trucks, 33 firearms and $28,000 in cash that was for one day’s payroll, Villanueva said. The eradication operation ran from June 8-18.

The majority of those arrested were undocumented persons, Villanueva said. Many of the illegal grows have been directly tied to Mexican drug trafficking organizations as well as Asian and Armenian organized crime groups, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

“What we want to do is send a clear and loud message to the cartels and anyone doing an illegal operation in the high desert,” Villanueva said. “Your days are over and we’re coming for you.”

While investigators said they identified more than 500 illegal outdoor cannabis grows in LA County, Villanueva said there are as many as 860 illegal grows in neighboring San Bernardino County to the east, while Kern County to the north, Riverside County to the southeast and Ventura County to the west are also experiencing illegal operations.

“Well, this is a whack-a-mole game,” the sheriff said. “[San Bernardino County has] a lot less resources in terms of personnel than we do, so this is at least, on the grow side, this is a five-county problem that we need to resolve, and it’s going to take manpower. We have the ability, the willingness, the technical know-how, the expertise—what we’re always short on is the resources to get the people employed.”

Sheriffs’ department members from Kern, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties were among the 400-plus personnel involved in the LA County operation. Also collaborating on the operation were deputies from the Community Partnerships Bureau; Safe Street and Special Victims Bureau detectives; cities of Lancaster and Palmdale station deputies; Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents; the California National Guard; and California Department of Fish and Wildlife agents. Water theft enforcement teams made 19 additional arrests.

Environmental Impacts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Water theft continues to threaten the water supply for residents in the eastern portion of the Antelope Valley, leaving many of the region’s potato, alfalfa and carrot farmers without a necessary resource, Villanueva said. The theft occurs from fire hydrants and unpermitted water wells that were being drilled on the grow sites.

“Most Californians would be shocked and disappointed at the amount of water these unlicensed, illegal grows are using, especially as California suffers from a drought,” DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Curt Fallin said in the LA County Sheriff’s Department press release.  “By our calculation, the illegal grows in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties require an astounding 5.4 million gallons of water a day, every day.”

On July 8, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to voluntarily cut back on household water consumption by 15% compared with last year, as he expanded his regional drought state of emergency to apply to 50 counties, or roughly 42% of the state’s population, Los Angeles Times reported.

The water theft by illegal cannabis growers is part of an effort to irrigate each plant up to 3 gallons of water per day in the High Desert, according to Eric Lindberg, the senior engineering geologist and chief of the South Coast Cannabis Regulatory Unit, who represented the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board during the July 7 press conference.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Unregulated cannabis cultivation operations often allow fertilizers, pesticides, petroleum fuels, sediment, irrigation tailwater, trash and human waste to be released into the environment and to pollute waters of the state, Lindberg said. And illegal diversions of surface water for cultivation drains lakes and streams, he said.

“In many cases, illegal pesticides are found at illicit cannabis cultivation sites,” Lindberg said. “Many of these pesticides are banned for use in the United States because they’re highly toxic to humans and animals. Illegal pesticides can contaminate the soil, service water and ground water, and are easily mobilized by stormwater runoff.

“Pesticides used to exterminate insects, rodents, mold and weeds can move up the food chain and can cause secondary poising and mortality of pets and other animals. These pesticides can also contaminate our drinking water supplies.”

Threat to Wildlife

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

During the 10-day operation, enforcement personnel also rescued 180 animals, including 84 dogs, many of which are up for adoption.

In addition, two dead bears were discovered nearby the illegal grow sites. Their deaths we directly attributed to pesticide use, according to the sheriff’s release.

Chloe Hakim, a biologist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife Region 5, as well as the lead scientist for the Los Angeles County regional department, said during the press conference that both scientific and enforcement action are needed to stop illegal grows and to mitigate their negative impacts.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Focused on protecting the diverse plant, fish and wildlife resources for their ecological value, and the habitat they depend upon, Hakim said seeing first-hand what the illegal grow sites have done to surrounding habitats has been tragic. During her field assessments, Hakim said she observed substantial alterations to streams from sediment buildups attributed to illegal cultivations through grading that can cause death and abnormalities to aquatic species, as well as stream crossing that cause fish impediment and other harms to nearby plants and wildlife.

Trash, illegal pesticides and illegal fertilizers also do harm, she said.

“Just a quarter teaspoon of carbofuran, which is an illegal pesticide that some illegal growers use, can kill a bear,” she said. “And you can only imagine what that can do to us humans when the sheriffs come across [it] and they’re picking out the weed, and biologists of our agency come across and they step by this pesticide. This is something that is important to resolve and important to get ahead and completely eradicate this kind of an issue.”

Some of the region’s critical species that need their habitats protected to thrive and survive include the Mohave ground squirrel, desert tortoise and Swainson’s hawk, as well as Joshua trees, which are protected under California state law, but illegal cultivators have cut them down to build their hoop houses.

Intimidating Local Residents

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Not only are the illegal growers threatening wildlife and water supplies for local residents, but they’ve threatened and intimidated the locals themselves, U.S. Congressman Mike Garcia said during the press conference. Garcia represents California’s 25th District, which encompasses the majority of LA County’s northern region, including the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

“When I first heard about this problem at the beginning of this year, it was one of these things that you couldn’t believe it until you actually saw it,” he said. “I ended up going flying with the local sheriffs out in Palmdale in April. I saw it from the air at the time. There were roughly 400 to 500 of these illegal nurseries in the local area, and it was absolutely heartbreaking to see.”

After he landed, Garcia said he took a 25-minute drive to Pearblossom, an unincorporated community of roughly 2,500 people, where he held a townhall with local residents. The testimonies Garcia heard from those locals were absolutely tragic, he said. They were being threatened on a daily basis by bad actors and cartel members with weapons, he said.

“While I was at this townhall, we had a member of the cartel, an armed member of the cartel, in the front row,” Garcia said. “He was there to send a clear message, not to me, but to the residents that talking to elected officials about this problem was a bad idea. He was there to intimidate.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 

Before last month’s operation, the illegal growers in the Antelope Valley faced zero risk and a substantial reward of up to $15 billion harvested from the High Desert on an annual basis, Garcia said.

While the sting operation resulted in the seizure of harvested cannabis and plants worth roughly $1.2 billion, investigators said that the operation accounted for only 40% of the illegal outdoor grows in the county, where up to four harvests per year can materialize. If those illicit grows went uninterrupted by law enforcement, LA County alone would have shadowed the state-legal market, which brought in $4.4 billion of retail sales in 2020.

“After this operation, we were able to rebalance the risk-versus-reward matrix, and we need to continue to make sure that the risks are unlimited and the reward is absolutely zero for these cartel members,” Garcia said.

Continued efforts are all about reclaiming the county for the residents of the Antelope Valley, Villanueva said.

Founded in 1850, the LA County Sheriff’s Department was the first professional police force in the Los Angeles area and worked to tame the lawlessness of the county over 150 years ago, he said. The department shouldn’t have to try and re-tame it again to regain a sense of law and order for a civil society, he said, but that’s what it’s had to do.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

When Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris took the podium during the press conference, he picked up one of the 33 confiscated firearms from a nearby display table and pointed it in the direction of media members.

“This is the cartels,” he said. “We are very, very close to driving down the freeway and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what’s coming. And if you have any doubt, our citizens have to look at this part of the gun; not this part.”

Parris set the gun back down on the table and said the cartel members are even walking into people’s homes to intimidate them.

Later in his remarks, Parris lightened the tone when talking about Lancaster lending its tractors and construction equipment that were used to tear down the illegal cultivation sites. “I got to ride one; it was great fun,” he said.

Continuing Efforts

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Although many of the 131 individuals arrested were armed, Villanueva said they showed little resistance. Before the operation, the illegal farmers’ biggest threat was actually being ripped off by other cartels stealing their harvests, he said.

“We didn’t meet any really resistance at all, because typically when we showed up at one of the grows, everyone just took off into the desert running or they surrendered,” Villanueva said. “We didn’t get a lot of resistance.

“No one got away, for the record. Every single person that we put our eyes on is in custody.”

The 22 felony and 109 misdemeanor arrests have been filed with LA County District Attorney George Gascón’s office for consideration, Villanueva said. However, the sheriff did not offer overwhelming faith in the DA’s office.

“We have been very disheartened by the district attorney not filing on our cases for human trafficking when it comes to sex crimes and prostitution,” Villanueva said. “So now we’re going to present this and see what the district attorney will do, but hopefully he’ll do the right thing.”

With the district attorney’s decision out of his hands, Villanueva said his department will focus on eradicating the other 300-some sites investigators identified during their aerial reconnaissance. Last month’s operation cost about $1 million, he said. During the second week of the operation, his department had to scrounge around to pay for the gasoline involved in the eradication efforts, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

To help future efforts, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the 5th District on the five-member LA County Board of Supervisors, said she’s going to provide the sheriff’s department discretionary funding through her district allocation.

Further funding from the county was blocked by the majority of the supervisors, Parris said. That’s why Lancaster’s city equipment was used 17 miles outside of its jurisdiction, he said.

Last month, Barger’s office allocated $100,000 to the operation, she said during the press conference. Beyond that, the eradication efforts need to be more than an episodic position, she said.

“I have told my colleagues it’s only a matter of time before it leaves the Antelope Valley and hits down below,” she said. “What began as water theft has exploded to become the infiltration of organized crime groups in the Antelope Valley who are operating internationally.

“This illegal activity is impacting the quality of life for residents and businesses, and if left unaddressed, will have long-lasting and devastating effects in the region.”

As the illicit market continues to thrive throughout California, the outdoor operations in the Antelope Valley are the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s primarily focus because they are the most visible, Villanueva said.

Meanwhile, the cartels are gobbling up cash-only real estate transactions, sometimes buying up entire neighborhoods of residential homes, and gutting the interiors to convert them into indoor grows, he said.

“So, you can see them starting to shift their operations to indoors,” Villanueva said. “That’s the next logical step for these illegal cartels.”

In Oklahoma, illicit growing operations are dominating the medical cannabis market, and it’s taking a toll on local growers. 

“When Oklahoma passed the State Question 788 [the Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative] in June 2018, really for about the first two and a half years, we had very little, criminal activity that worked its way into our lane,” says Mark Woodward, the public information officer at Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics (OBN). “But in the last six to eight months, we’ve seen an influx of both legal and criminal organizations pouring into Oklahoma and applying for a license.” 

Woodward says the OBN has shut down more than two dozen criminal growing operations between April and June, and the organization currently receives about 30 to 100 tips a week of suspicious farms. 

There are a few standard methods of illicit cannabis operations the OBN is recognizing, he says. 

“We’ve got some dispensaries that are selling out-of-state [illicit] market products from places like Nevada and California coming here,” he says. “We’ve got some criminal organizations that come here, and they just start growing. They never get a license, and they think because it’s so overwhelming in Oklahoma, nobody will notice as we’ve got over 7,300 licensed growers.” 

The operations that are growing without a license have been relatively easier to crack down on, Woodward says. If the OBN gets a tip on a suspicious operation, runs the address, and no active license is registered, they can immediately go to a judge and get a warrant and file cultivation, he says. 

However, nine out of ten times, this is not the case, and the situations are much more complex. 

To apply for a license in Oklahoma, 75% of the ownership must be owned by someone who has lived in the state for a minimum of two years; however, these illicit companies are finding a way around that through hiring “ghost owners,” he says. 

“They’re working with local attorneys and others who can pop up fraudulent paperwork to find somebody who will agree to be the quote-unquote ‘owner,'” he says. “They’re having these ghost owners put their names on sometimes over a hundred licenses. When in reality, they know nothing about the farm, other than they go to the mailbox once a month for a $5,000 check.” 

“So that fraudulent business structure is set up, so they get their license, and they cross every ‘T’ and every ‘I’ so that they don’t draw attention to themselves,” he adds. “But a hundred percent of their product is being moved off the farm in box trucks in the middle of the night to the East coast and the money is laundered all over the U.S. and outside of the U.S.” 

Woodward says these situations involve a thorough investigation to “peel back” all the layers of fraudulent ownership to discover who is moving the workers and plants and who is laundering and wiring the money all over the world. 

“Through our criminal investigation and through working with federal partners, we’re tracing their product all over the U.S., and one hundred percent of the product is being sold to people who are not legally allowed to have it,” he says.  

The OBN has identified several farms tied to some of these criminal elements, but it’s challenging to keep up, as new ones are coming in every day, he says. 

“The drug organizations can bring in new workers and [several thousand] three-foot plants within 48 hours,” he says. “They know we’re going to clamp down eventually, but because our licenses and our land is cheap, they can grow for $400 a pound in Oklahoma, and turn that around and flip that for $2,400 a pound in Brooklyn, New York. So, they cannot get here fast enough because they know the profit margin is just absolutely off the charts.” 

With three major highways running through the state, and Oklahoma being centrally located in the U.S., it’s an ideal place for a distribution center, says Corbin Wyatt, owner of Likewise Cannabis, an Oklahoma-based vertically integrated cannabis company. 

“I think people are looking at Oklahoma as a great hotbed and an opportunity to grow and then distribute,” Wyatt says. “But on top of that, the licensing process is so easy and cheap, and there’s no cap. So not only are we ideal for it from distribution and a cost for production standpoint, but it’s also easily accessible, more easily accessible than anywhere else in the country to get growing licenses.” 

One of the most significant impacts the illicit market has had on local growers is they are fighting an excess of production, Wyatt says. 

“When people are essentially just saying, ‘Oh, you know what, that doesn’t concern me; also, it’s cheaper in the legal market to cover my basis. So, I’m really making my money in the illegal market.’ That hurts everybody, because suddenly you go from what’s a profitable and enjoyable industry to be a part of to we’re competing against people that aren’t playing by the same rules.” 

Woodward says the OBN has attended several of the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association’s meetings, where the company has heard from several growers who express the same frustration as Wyatt. 

“We’ll be in a room of hundred people saying, ‘We’ve got our life savings invested and we can’t keep our head above water because we’re having to test our batches, follow all the pesticides and regulations and pay our workers fair wages, which is keeping our prices much higher than the illicit market. We just can’t compete,'” he says. “And again, those are their words, not ours. They’re begging for help.” 

To get a handle on the illicit market, Wyatt says several things must change, including implementing seed-to-sale tracking and stricter requirements for the state’s licensing process. 

“There really just needs to be a better system in making sure that when people are trying to come in to get licenses, that it’s not only legal but it’s done as the rules say it should be done,” Wyatt says. 

The state has already taken some steps to implement stricter law enforcement. 

“Just yesterday, U.S. Senator James Inhofe said that they’re going to make a request to Congress for $4 million to help start up a full-time enforcement unit here in Oklahoma,” Woodward says. “We’ve hit a number of farms and we’ve got dozens of active investigations, but our agents are also working with fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and prescription fraud—they’re spinning a lot of plates.” 

Woodward says the OBN has a commitment from the legislature and congressional delegation to help the agency start a full-time unit that will consist of 20 to 30 strategically located agents who will work with sheriffs and police departments all over Oklahoma to get a better handle on this issue.  

“We’re doing a good job, but we can’t do it fast enough to meet how many new applicants are coming in here.”

As cannabis legalization becomes more widespread across the U.S., farmers are discovering new ways to grow the crop.

DeMario Vitalis, owner of New Age Provisions Farms, a farming business based in Indianapolis, has experience growing a variety of crops outdoors, but a couple years ago, he began searching for something new—a method that might provide him more control over his work. 

In 2019, Vitalis started to explore cultivating hemp indoors hydroponically—the process of growing plants in soilless nutrient solution, Cannabis Business Times previously reported.

That year, Vitalis began working with Freight Farms, a Boston-based company that provides farmers with cultivation software integrated within a 320-square-foot shipping container. He received his first shipping container from the company in August 2020 and his second one in January.

Through the use of automation equipment, the Greenery S and farmhand, Freight Farms has created a way for growers to control and access their farming operations from anywhere in the world.

According to James Woolward, chief marketing officer at Freight Farms, the Greenery S manages the environment inside the 40-foot shipping containers using four specialized systems: air, light, water and nutrient control. It also has sensors throughout the grow area so it can relay information, data and updates about the grow directly to farmhand, an operating system app that growers can download on their phone.

Freight Farms works with farmers who grow several different crops hydroponically inside shipping containers, including lettuces, leafy greens, herbs, flowers, roots and more, but the company recently started incorporating cannabis and hemp.

“We have three or four [growers] at the moment that grow cannabis and hemp,” Woolward says. “They’re independent customers, so they buy the farm from us, and then they build their own business. We have quite a lot of customers [who use this as] an addition to their traditional agriculture because you’re removing seasonality, basically.”

The Benefits

One of the most significant benefits of growing hydroponic cannabis and hemp in a shipping container is that growers do not have to worry about the outdoor climate, Woolward says. Instead, they can harvest year-round, even in areas that reach extremely hot or cold temperatures.

“We have a lot of customers in Alaska and Canada, and you can imagine during the winter, the [shipping containers] become more of an engine of their business because it gives [them] that control 365 days a year,” he says.

© Courtesy of New Age Provisions Farms

Despite Vitalis’ experience with outdoor cultivation, he says he prefers growing in the shipping container. It has given Vitalis better control over his crops—something he felt he needed, as he can manage his crops even when he’s not in the vicinity. The Freight Farms environmental control system allows him to see what’s happening within and around his hemp crops.

“It reminds me if levels are getting too low or too high to check the app and set alerts,” he says. “If I leave the farm, I’m able to get into the app, turn the lights on and make sure the fans and pumps are running. And as that stuff is going, it also measures the environment in the farm. It measures the temperature, humidity, CO2 [carbon dioxide] levels, pH levels and EC [electrical conductivity] levels. So, all of that is at the palm of your hand, and you can also control and set those levels as well, according to what you’re growing.”

Additionally, Woolward says the harvest time in a shipping container compared to growing outdoors can be shorter (depending on the variety) because of the intensity of nutrients going straight into the plants, combined with the LED lights, which growers can use to replicate natural light but at a higher strength, he says.

Challenges

Vitalis says one of the biggest learning curves from transitioning from growing outdoors to growing to growing hydroponically indoors was learning the correct dosing of nutrients for his crops.

As Robert Eddy, a consultant and former Purdue University greenhouse manager, previously wrote for Cannabis Business Times, when growing hydroponically, the “nutrient solutions are automatically fed into irrigation lines using a fertilizer injector drawing from concentrated fertilizer tanks or pumps drawing from reservoirs of pre-mixed solutions.”

“When you grow outdoors, the nutrients are provided with the soil, but in a shipping container, you have to supplement the nutrients and the dosing tanks,” Vitalis says. “In [hydroponic cultivation], the nutrients that the hemp plants need are also absorbed by other plants, such as your herbs and your lettuces. So, you just have to do trial and error and see what the hemp likes and what the other lettuces like. [Freight Farms] also gives you a supplemental tank to put extra nutrients in as well.”

Ensuring the tanks inside the shipping container are filled with water was another challenge Vitalis faced when transiting to hydroponic farming. If the tanks aren’t filled, it effects the nutrients as well.

“When growing hydroponically, you’re totally reliant on water,” he says. “One of the things I had to learn was to make sure the tanks are filled, the pumps are running, and that there’s water flowing because the machine will tell you that the pump is on and that it’s running, but it won’t tell you that there’s water flowing through the pumps.”

He suggests growers pursuing hydroponic cultivation to check the water flow frequently to ensure their plants remain healthy, he says.

Opportunities

Growers can purchase a farm from Freight Farms for roughly $140,000, and operating costs could range from $25,000-$30,000 a year depending on wages like electricity, water and annual supplies, Woolward says.

Woolward suggests growers have a good understanding of their local zoning, regulations and customer base before cultivating in a shipping container.

“The key to our successful customers is their good business people that go and find the market and understand their market and the best way to service that market to get the occurring revenue,” Woolward says.

Vitalis also suggests that growers weigh the pros and cons of growing hydroponically versus growing traditional depending on their area.

“Sometimes there may be more benefits to doing a traditional type of farming than it is to grow hydroponically,” Vitalis says. “For example, if you have access to a bunch of land, it may make sense for you to grow traditional farming. You just want to make sure your numbers are right before you jump in.”