Fresh Grow’s Mobile Racking Strategy Places Clones and Veg at the Center of Operations

Optimizing plant movement through the veg room is essential for maintaining an efficient and productive cultivation process. Everything your team does in the veg room will dictate how your plants thrive in flower up through harvest.

Fresh Grow, a national cannabis cultivation company, implemented Pipp Horticulture’s mobile vertical racking units to make sure their operations run efficiently. The company operates in Colorado, Delaware, and New Jersey, recently expanding with a 17,000-sq.-ft. facility in Delaware and a 60,000-sq.-ft. facility in New Jersey.

Steve Spradlin, National Director of Cultivation for Fresh Grow, shares insights into their innovative approaches and the tangible benefits they’ve seen.

So, how do you identify that ideal site for your facility?

As Pipp Cannabis Operations Specialist Anders Peterson said in a recent webinar, it helps to move methodically through a checklist of sorts, covering utilities, structural support, climate considerations, and fire code compliance. Schedule meetings with all your stakeholders to confirm that your checklist aligns with local regulations and business goals.

Let’s get into it…

Veg Room Setup

The veg room sets thefoundation for plants’ growth cycle. While the fertigation room is literally in the center of Fresh Grow’s building, it’s the veg rooms that fan out from there and kickstart the process for plants moving through the facility.

Proper racking can significantly impact the efficiency of plant movement and overall workflow within a facility. Fresh Grow’s veg room in New Jersey utilizes a three-tier Pipp rack system for clones, mother plants, and all stages of production.

The team will soon build out a second veg room, both of which will tee plants up for their eventual 10 flower rooms.

This veg setup optimizes space and workflow, ensuring every square foot is used efficiently.

Step-by-Step Movement of Plants

Here’s how it works for Fresh Grow: The veg room runs six racks wide by nine racks deep.

Mother plants are located on the bottom rack at the back of the room. This strategic placement ensures that they are easily accessible for taking cuttings while being somewhat protected from the high-traffic areas at the front of the room.

Cuttings are taken from these mother plants to produce clones, which are then moved to the front of the room. This cyclical process ensures a steady supply of new plants, which is essential for maintaining production schedules.

Clones are placed on the lowest rack at the front of the veg room for easy access and initial care. This allows for frequent monitoring and adjustments as needed to ensure optimal growth conditions.

Clones are particularly sensitive to environmental changes, so ensuring stable humidity, temperature, and light conditions at this stage is critical. Pipp’s racking systems allow for precise environmental control with integrated lighting and airflow solutions. It’s a matter of balance, and Spradlin’s seen it all.

“I’ve seen five-tiered grows, two-tiered grows, and three-tiered grows, but with Pipp’s system, we’re able to maximize our canopy square footage efficiently,” Spradlin said. The key to avoiding microclimates is to keep the air moving across those three tiers in a “cyclonic” pattern. By maintaining consistent airflow, his team can move their plants right on time as they move further into their veg cycle.

Once ready, clones move to the next two tiers of Fresh Grow’s racking system for further growth.

Each tier corresponds to a specific growth stage, which requires careful monitoring and adjustments to environmental conditions. Plants in the initial veg stage require different environmental conditions than those in the cloning stage. Those veg plants will stick together as they disperse into separate flower rooms.

“That is where we’ve learned the most about the racks, is in veg,” Spradlin says. “I can tell you that for sure.” Other cultivation teams can use their veg rooms to dial in operational efficiencies that will improve distinct areas of the business, too.

Efficiency at Scale

It would be one thing if Spradlin and his team were setting up only their new facility in this way, but Fresh Grow has prioritized scale when it comes to these on-the-ground efficiencies.

SOPs translate from New Jersey to Delaware and back to Colorado. That’s a critical part of Fresh Grow’s multistate growth strategy. This uniformity extends to their nutrient lines, pruning schedules, and trellising events. By standardizing these procedures, Fresh Grow ensures their operations are efficient and scalable, regardless of location.

As an added bonus, it makes internal team transfers super easy. A Delaware employee recently moved to the Colorado location, and it was a seamless experience, Spradlin says.

On a more granular level, he’s seen the day-to-day benefits of mobile racking all over the facility. Cleaning protocol, for one, has improved markedly. Without proper sanitation SOPs, a cultivation facility is working from a serious disadvantage that may have costly ripple effects throughout production. A clean room is a profitable room, after all, and mobile racks make that part of the job much easier. It’s been a revelation, Spradlin says.

“I’ve worked with static racking forever, and being able to just move a rack to clean under it: Holy cow,” he says. “Instead of getting all your hands and knees in a vacuum to get up under there… That’s one of my favorite parts, is you can move it with one finger and you can clean under them.”

Conclusion

The integration of Pipp Horticulture’s mobile racking systems has revolutionized Fresh Grow’s cultivation process, boosting efficiency and scalability. By optimizing plant movement through the veg room, Fresh Grow ensures each growth stage is meticulously managed and monitored. The result? Greater efficiency throughout the facility. Spradlin says that his entire team can sense the improved workflows.

The strategic placement of mother plants and clones, coupled with precise environmental control, highlights the critical role of a well-structured veg room in maintaining production schedules.

The scalability of those relevant SOPs across multiple states has streamlined operations. Implementing uniform nutrient lines, pruning schedules, and trellising events ensures consistency in cultivation practices, no matter the location. This move boosts operational efficiency and supports their growth strategy as a multistate operator.

Moreover, the practical benefits of mobile racking systems, such as easier cleaning protocols, underscore the operational improvements achieved by Fresh Grow. The ability to move racks effortlessly for thorough cleaning has streamlined maintenance tasks, contributing to a cleaner, more productive growing environment.

As Spradlin emphasizes, the simplicity of mobile racking has been a game-changer for their cultivation facilities.

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Season 2 | Episode 31: Precision Planning: Mastering Cannabis Financial Modeling

Summary:

Introduction

◦ Hosts: Michael Williamson and Anders Peterson.

◦ Guest: Ian Miller, CEO of Catalyst BC.

◦ Ian's background includes raising significant private equity, working in various sectors including high-end yachts, and being on the founding team of Loop Pay. • Discussion Topics

◦ Financial Modeling Challenges

▪ Unique challenges in creating financial models for the cannabis industry, such as commoditization and margin compression.

▪ Importance of accurate KPIs and the variability of operator performance.

▪ Impact of regulatory environments and compliance on financial models.

◦ Investor Perspectives

▪ Key factors investors look for in financial models: detail, sobriety of assumptions, and realistic schedules.

▪ Importance of having skin in the game and available resources.

◦ Construction and Operational Challenges

▪ Unique construction challenges in cannabis facilities.

▪ Importance of power availability and realistic project scopes.

▪ Common mistakes: inadequate power planning and underestimating the complexity of projects.

◦ Revenue Projections and Profitability

▪ Critical variables affecting revenue projections and profitability.

▪ Speed to market, talent, capitalization, and achieving KPIs are essential.

▪ Detailed planning and high-quality execution are crucial for maximizing profits.

◦ Emerging Trends and Developments

▪ Shift from equity to debt financing.

▪ Trends in multi-layer horticulture and automation.

▪ Importance of energy cost analysis and life cycle costs.

• Customer Retention and Market Knowledge

◦ Importance of knowing your customer demographic.

◦ Strategies for building customer loyalty and retention.

◦ Examples from retail operations highlighting the significance of customer service.

• Personal Story and Motivation

◦ Ian shares a personal story about his father's experience with medical cannabis.

◦ Emphasizes the impact of cannabis on health and the motivation behind Ian's involvement in the industry.

About Cultivation Elevated

If you are a grower looking to optimize your cultivation facility or anyone looking to cultivate more in less space, then this is the show for you. Each week, join Host Michael Williamson as he travels across the country, to explore the world of vertical farming and the future of cannabis and food production through his conversations with leading industry operators, growers and executives who are demonstrating success and resilience as growers and cultivators. Each episode provides stories and key insights that will inspire and show you first-hand, how each of these companies have overcome challenges, and found their own path to success.

Resources

Show Links

Pipp Horticulture Website

Pipp Horticulture YouTube

Pipp Horticulture - Facebook

Pipp Horticulture Instagram

Pipp Horticulture LinkedIn

Pipp Horticulture Pinterest

Pipp Horticulture Twitter

Video

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Claybourne - (Best Of) 5.25.23 - WEB - 29

Lesson Learned from a Decade in CEA: Part 2

With over a decade in the controlled environment agriculture industry, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide array of growers cultivating vastly different crops. More often than not, the economics of those crops are as widespread as the geography in which they are grown.

Considering how poinsettias have penny-per-plant margins, lettuce heads average more than $43 per 100 pounds (according to the June 2024 USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Agricultural Prices report), and single pounds of cannabis sometimes sell for thousands of dollars, it’s fair to say that not all CEA operators live the same experience.

In Part 1, I highlighted the misconception that every crop, but especially cannabis, is different and needs to be treated as such. But as we discussed in that blog, this notion couldn’t be further from the truth as there are a lot of lessons the traditional markets could learn from the innovative cannabis industry (and why that was the case). The inverse is also true.

Here, I share some of the lessons I have learned from the food and floriculture side of the CEA industry that cannabis growers can (and potentially should) explore in their operations.

Focused Business Planning

Vertical growers can thank the cannabis industry for helping to fund much of the research & development into indoor farming. Cannabis growers, due to the value of their crops, could afford to take risks and/or allocate space to R & D projects, something that traditional crop growers would be hard-pressed to do given the thinner margins they must contend with.

The necessity to build lean operations and purpose-designed facilities makes most non-cannabis vertical farmers better agricultural economists. Most of these companies have clear and targeted business plans, with crop production tailored to their final customer’s needs. For some, that’s a general grocery retailer like Kroger or Whole Foods. For others, it’s specialty food retailers or independent grocers. Some farmers only grow products for restaurants. Most only grow a handful of products at best, while some only cultivate one lettuce or strawberry variety.

Whatever crop and market these vertical farmers serve, they can meet customer quality and consistency expectations. By delivering products to spec, they’ve built solid business relationships to sustain their operations for years.

Cannabis growers have had the opportunity to dabble in multiple retail and medical products: some grow both branded and white-label products, as well as make extracts, edibles, tinctures, and topicals in-house. Many of these businesses found early success thanks in large part to their cultivation capacity, but as competition has ramped up in many North American markets and consumers identify brands they most resonate with, several of these companies have found themselves overextended, unable to meet quality expectations or achieve consistency across batches.

Take for example Canopy Growth, which once upon a time boasted having the largest cannabis canopy footprint in the world. After years of producing more cannabis than it could sell, the company divested from all of its cultivation assets. Now, it exists only as a house of brands, relying on other, more specialized producers to make its branded products.

Taking a page from the traditional agriculture market, cannabis growers should consider retooling their business plans and production goals to go from jacks-of-all-trades to masters of some. It’s incredibly difficult to get everything right all the time, but it’s much easier to get one or two things consistently perfect. By finding their niche and focusing their efforts on deepening their expertise in that market, cannabis growers will be much better positioned for the commoditization movement we’re already seeing play out, which will only get worse in the U.S. with full federal legalization.

Develop a Commodity Mindset

It’s a foregone conclusion that not all cannabis brands are going to make it. Even with dedicated retail space, if you’re unable to grow a good quality product at a fair price, you simply are running a fundamentally unsound business, and no quantity of marketing and branding will be able to save you (at least not beyond the short term).

Take for example MedMen, one of the first vertically integrated U.S. cannabis brands. Its approach to building both cultivation and retail footprints garnered both local and national media attention. However, the company’s over-reliance on its appeal as the “Apple Store of weed,” coupled with its poor growing practices with high cost of goods sold (COGS), led the California company to declare bankruptcy with $410 million in debts, per Law360.

If there’s one thing food producers have learned, it’s that their asset value is not in a brand–it’s the fact that their facility is a plant factory. This is why it’s crucial for cannabis growers, especially vertical growers, to avoid overspending on building a brand early in its development, and instead focus on their facility.

Proper facility design will go a long way in building that asset value. This includes maximizing floor space via mobile vertical racks, optimizing canopy airflow via in-rack airflow systems, leveraging advanced automated controls, as well as using energy-efficient HVAC, lighting, and watering systems.

A cannabis business, especially a cannabis cultivation business, should not be viewed as a short-term tech play, where founders aim to flip the company for huge profits to a multi-state operator (MSO) within 5 years of launching. It’s a farming business that takes years to build. How many farmers do you know that only farm for 5 years?

But the good news is that if you do this well, you won’t need a brand to help you sell your business when you’re ready to do so. By building up that asset–your facility and operations–the higher your value for acquisitions will be. You will be able to enter with a stronger position in partnerships, or with more leverage in negotiations.

Data Collection, Research, and Collaboration

As we talked about in Part 1, Prohibition forced cannabis growers to go indoors and not reveal their activities to the outside world. Growers started finding their own lighting and nutrient recipes that turned their crops into “gas.” These findings were closely guarded secrets, never to be shared lest a copycat “steal your work.”

While this attitude might have been justified at one point in time, it’s no longer a viable way to operate in a legalized market. Food and floriculture growers have benefited incredibly from collaborating with one another, government agencies, and academics. Thanks to that collaboration, vertical farmers growing traditional crops know crop data more intimately than their cannabis-growing counterparts.

While cannabis growers still can’t collaborate with the USDA to create massive data reports like the agency produces for food and floriculture crops, cannabis growers would be well served to use their facilities to collect data and share that data broadly. A growing number of universities are either launching cannabis-specific degrees and/or expanding horticulture programs to include cannabis and hemp. Partnerships with academia can help growers develop best practices for designing and building these vertical farms, and create standardized cultivation protocols.

While individual cultivars may require slightly different approaches, the variance across genetics is not as vast as some cannabis growers seem to believe. Look at it this way: how many ways are there to grow a strawberry, an apple, or a head of lettuce?

Even if cannabis growers are hesitant to share data at the risk of revealing proprietary information to the public, companies operating multiple facilities can still benefit from data collection and sharing across sites. By doing so, MSOs can standardize their operations across state markets, bringing consistency to their products across state lines and enabling consumers to trust what they are going to purchase whether it’s bought in Oklahoma, California, or Ohio.

Eventually, the goal should be to be able to share data with government agencies to be able to create extensive reports as it does with traditional crops–although federal agencies will also need to build trust with the very same growers they maligned for decades. But without building the infrastructure to collect, synthesize, and analyze data, growers are choosing to remain in the dark when the cannabis industry is rearing to break into the light.

The cannabis industry will continue to undergo massive changes as federal rules evolve, but the path forward for companies looking at long-term sustainability has always been the same: adapt and learn from the broader agricultural community to not only survive but thrive.

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The Path of the Cannabis Plant: How to Optimize Your Grow Room Layout

Creating efficient, profitable cannabis grow rooms requires thoughtful planning. Plants demand different levels of care throughout the growing process. How you arrange them along the way will play a vital role in ensuring healthy movement and development.

Your facility floor plan must include distinct rooms for propagation, mother, veg, and flower. This ensures proper care, productivity, and limited risk of cross-contamination.

Additionally, multi-tiered vertical farming solutions provide even more space while allowing cultivators to continue monitoring pH levels, nutrient content, and humidity with ease. Using the right racking systems is paramount in maintaining consistent air circulation and light filtration.

Accounting for current and future needs when designing a grow room can be daunting. However, we can help you craft a facility equipped with optimized growing systems, layouts, and workspaces to boost profitability and longevity in the cannabis industry.

How to Set Up Grow Rooms for Plant Movement

Cultivators must account for various factors when designing a cannabis grow room, such as ease of access to plants, airflow, irrigation systems, and structural elements. Vertical farming techniques solve many of these problems, as growers can smoothly integrate automated environmental controls to monitor water, nutrients, and humidity levels.

Other factors to consider when building a cannabis grow room include:

Ceiling height
Drain locations
Current workflow
Installation timelines
Potential obstructions to plant access
Local municipal building codes
Door locations
Ground level

1. Mother Room

Your mothers secure future crop yields. Keeping them happy and comfortable in their vegetative state ensures you can continue cloning and cultivating new plants. An efficiently managed mother room will account for individual genetics and incorporate nutrient management, pest, and pathogen controls. These carefully curated practices foster consistency and reliability.

Many cultivators have opted for double-tiered racking systems rather than single-level layouts in their mother rooms. This change allows for growing additional genetics or housing new and older mothers in the same area. Larger facilities may even consider triple-tiered systems if budget and space allow.

When considering multi-tiered systems, growers must remember the importance of good ventilation. Proper airflow maintains stable temperatures and humidity levels while guarding against pests and mold. In-rack airflow Systems like Vertical Air Solutions (VAS) can be built into tiered racks for seamless, even air distribution (we’ll touch on this further below), freeing more space for easy plant access.

Ensuring Sanitation and Hygiene

One thing to note when building a cannabis mother room is sanitation. Cross-contamination can ruin your efforts to cultivate productive, healthy mother plants. Therefore, never use cart systems intended for mothers outside the mother room. Ensure other grow rooms are supplied with enough equipment to sustain current and future needs.

2. Clone Room

Clone rooms, also known as propagation rooms, are designed to encourage healthy root development in new plants or cuttings. However, this space is not inherently necessary for every operation. Smaller cultivation centers can combine veg and clone rooms to save on resources and space. Still, 2-5% of the total floor plan should be dedicated to this stage of cannabis growth.

If growers are using one room for multiple purposes, proper considerations should be taken when approaching the layout.

Generally, cultivators should keep clones with vegetative plants rather than mothers. Less traffic in the mother room protects genetics and mother-plant health.

Combining clones and veg plants in one space can expedite the transplanting process once clones are ready for vegetative propagation. Clones can be placed in the same racking systems as your veg plants but be sure to adjust the light levels lower to accommodate their needs.

For larger CEA operations, a dedicated clone room incorporating a multi-tiered rack system is ideal for optimal plant movement. One triple-tiered wired mesh cart can house between 300 to 600 clones. In the end, many of your design choices will be budget and scale-dictated.

3. Veg Room

Multi-tiered systems are most commonly seen in veg rooms. In the beginning days of cannabis cultivation, growers did not have enough vegetative space to keep flower rooms supplied. In response, they took advantage of cubic footage by growing upward rather than outward.

Now, a best practice when sizing a veg canopy is to allocate between 20 and 30% of your total flowering footprint to vegetative growth. Square footage may vary if facilities have a combined veg, mother, and clone room as opposed to separate spaces.

Regardless, the ideal size for a racking system is 32-40 ft. in length and 10-15 ft. in height. Triple-tiered racks are typical, but facilities with smaller inventories may consider double-tiered solutions instead. Regardless, these dimensions set you up for success as you create a functional veg room layout (and they apply to flower rooms, as well).

4. Flower Room

The flower room is the heart of operations and harbors the potential for your business–this is why layout and design are so critical.

Increasing yield is of the utmost importance to any cannabis cultivator. So, how can an efficient flower room boost profitability and efficiency?

Ultimately, layout, engineering, and equipment will determine your ability to achieve desired metrics. A well-designed space can produce two to three times more than a poorly drafted setup. Having an optimized operation gives you a leg up over competitors and ensures you’re equipped for evolving market demands.

Technologies, automation systems, and HVAC are essential components, but your floor plan is the foremost factor to consider. Plants should be spread equally to ensure proper development and consistent growth. Your crew must also have access to them for scouting, cutting, and transporting.

Modular systems solve both needs in one easy-to-navigate system. First, vertical racking systems maximize space and are seamlessly integrated into a current footprint. Second, growers can further boost capacities by adding mobile carriages, allowing for flexibility when expanding or rearranging floor plans.

Two-tiered solutions are the most common, but some facilities can accommodate three tiers. Remember–populate vertical growing systems with grow trays that are compatible with automated technologies to enhance functionality and yield.

Here are additional factors to consider when optimizing a flower room:

Environmental control systems: Consider including programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in your design. These controls can monitor how plants respond to subtle environmental changes, such as lighting and airflow. Using this information, you can gauge whether or not your current setup facilitates healthy plant growth and movement.

Proper airflow: Adequate airflow ensures proper humidity and temperature control while reducing the risk of contamination, pathogens, and mold. Multi-level airflow systems address these concerns by ensuring every tier receives consistent air movement. This technology can be easily integrated into multi-tiered racking systems.

Irrigation and fertigation: Don’t forget about irrigation systems when optimizing your grow room for plant movement and growth. Automated drip or hydro setups are great because they require minimal space and can prevent mishaps from stray hoses or cumbersome equipment.

Multiple cultivars: Different cannabis strains have unique phenotypes. Growers can adjust vertical racking systems to accommodate both tall and short plants.
Light mapping: Your flower room design will rely heavily on light mapping. You can use software to determine where plants can receive optimal exposure and distribute accordingly.

Planning for Future Growth

Always factor in your goals for expansion before you design your indoor grow rooms. Modular setups are typically best because they ensure growers can easily integrate new sections into each space. Incorporating additional modules requires less downtime, saving you resources and money.

A multi-tiered grow room setup can mean a higher upfront investment.

However, vertical farming greatly increases capacity, both square and cubic footage, which boosts potential yield and profitability. Growers have a more efficient indoor cultivation strategy with the added advantage of room for future augmentation.

Below are a few other things to consider before building a grow room:

Financial pro forma: This plan will guide you as you design a CEA operation. A financial pro forma should include initial building, operating, testing, labor, and utilities costs. You should also factor in potential profits and selling prices.

Your goals: Where do you see your business down the road? Are you comfortable with your current growing capabilities? Grow room designs should account for potential year-round production, specific strains, or crop-rearing methods.

Environmental resources: Ensure your location has the proper facilities to provide optimal environmental control. Consider energy availability, water quality, labor availability, and proximity to your target market.

Room for automation: Leave space for additional automation if you anticipate larger production. Additional plants could mean integrating more pest management, nutrient dosing, humidity control, and CO2 enrichment systems.

Pipp is here to help with all your grow room needs. We can guide you through designing a space that meets current market requirements and accommodates expansion. Our innovative solutions are excellent for any cannabis cultivator–whether you’re a beginner, expert, or somewhere in between.

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Lesson Learned from a Decade in CEA: Part 1

In the mid-20th century, NASA embarked on ambitious projects to grow plants in space to provide astronauts with a sustainable food source during prolonged missions. These experiments led to significant advancements in indoor lighting and hydroponic systems, technologies that would later revolutionize agriculture in controlled environments on Earth.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the food or floriculture markets that first picked up on these advancements, but rather illicit cannabis growers. Cannabis prohibition forced innovative cultivators to move their operations indoors to avoid detection. With legalization in states like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, the industry emerged from the shadows, bringing a wealth of expertise in controlled growing environments.

Early on, high cannabis prices meant growers could not lose money (barring a catastrophic crop failure). Data from Cannabis Benchmarks pegged average wholesale prices for a pound of cannabis flower at $1,789 in 2016, with average highs as much as $2,100. During this Green Rush, investment dollars flowed into purpose-built facility construction and retrofitting projects.

At the same time, indoor agriculture technology experienced a boom not seen since the Space Race. The advancements in LED lighting, mechanical cooling, environmental control and monitoring, and vertical growing technologies over the past decade can nearly all be tied to the growing cannabis market. Wholesale prices have since cooled (in 2023, the average wholesale price for flower was $1,019), yet cannabis remains a cash crop where innovation abounds.

In the decade that I’ve been involved in the cannabis and broader controlled environment agriculture (CEA) space, I’ve found that there is a misconception that these markets share few parallels. The cannabis cultivation market and the food/floriculture industries are mostly two sides of the same CEA coin, and there are insights and lessons that crop and flower producers can learn from cannabis growers.

Bridging the Gap between Cannabis and the Broader CEA Market

My experience as both a cannabis grower and Director of Horticulture at Pipp Horticulture has led me to develop a nuanced understanding of the CEA landscape and how cannabis fits within it as the outlier. To appreciate this, we should first zoom out and define what we mean by CEA and indoor farming.

Controlled environment agriculture is a technology-based approach to crop production that involves the control of most (if not all) plant growth variables. This includes lighting, temperature, humidity, irrigation, fertigation, airflow, CO2 supplementation, and more.

CEA can broadly be divided into two categories: indoor farms, and mixed-light structures. Mixed-light structures utilize both natural sunlight and artificial lighting to optimize plant growth. These facilities provide the benefits of natural light while allowing for environmental control through supplemental artificial lighting.

Greenhouses are one form of mixed-light facility. These are structures with walls and roofs made chiefly of transparent material such as glass or plastic in which plants requiring regulated climatic conditions are grown. Greenhouses can range from small, simple structures to large, high-tech installations, and they can be leveraged with or without supplemental lighting.

Hybrid mixed-light structures have a glass roof allowing sunlight to penetrate and insulated walls to better control the environment. These facilities combine the benefits of natural sunlight with enhanced climate control to optimize plant growth.

As opposed to mixed-light structures, indoor farms rely solely on artificial lighting. These are sometimes referred to as urban farms, vertical farms, and container farms.

While approaches to cannabis cultivation are broadly similar to food and floriculture production in mixed-light structures, cannabis indoor farms are unique in that they often are at the extreme of plant production levels. From lighting, CO2 supplementation, nutrient uptake, irrigation, and latent heat load management, these structures can be extremely energy- and resource-intensive. Some indoor cannabis growers operate their lights at intensities as high as 1,800 PPFD, which increases transpiration rates, latent loads, and nutrient delivery needs.

The cannabis plant’s ability to thrive in these environments and the dollar value crops can generate justify these large inputs. Produce or cut flower indoor farms are generally less energy-intensive than cannabis farms due to economic and crop limits (i.e. plant stress would negatively impact yield and quality in those conditions).

For these reasons, cannabis growers have been viewed as “lucky” to be able to make mistakes that would otherwise bankrupt an indoor food production business. Conversely, indoor farmers growing crops other than cannabis have been told for years that their methods aren’t feasible without the benefit of a cash crop. There may be some truth to both sentiments, but the fact that these industries continue to evolve in parallel remains true.

Lessons from the Cannabis Industry for Other Indoor Farmers

Budget for consultants and SMEs

In my time as a cannabis grower, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to design my own indoor farm. Due to the extensive licensing process, I had a lot of lead time to build my knowledge on the subject. Through my research, I discovered innovative indoor farming principles in both academic studies and online cannabis message boards. I studied cutting-edge technologies such as LED lights and environmental controllers. I drafted plans, scrapped them, and drafted some more.

Additionally, following my career as a cultivator, my time at Inspire (my previous employer) and Pipp Horticulture granted me the opportunity to impact the designs of hundreds of facilities.

These experiences taught me that you shouldn’t let your head grower be your design-build expert.

In the early legalization days, private investors looking to tap into the Green Rush, none the wiser, would sometimes give full design control to growers who presented a “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude. Even architects and systems designers, who had no experience with cannabis, deferred crucial decisions to these “experts,” sometimes leading to millions of dollars in losses due to design-build errors and missed opportunity costs.

To be fair, few technologies were purposely designed to address the needs and realities of commercial indoor cannabis environments, and little knowledge was available about growing the plant at such scales. High-intensity discharge (HID) lights such as high-pressure sodium (HPS) fixtures were the industry standard. These systems emit significant amounts of heat, increasing cooling costs, and preventing growers from leveraging vertical racks to maximize the use of their floorspace. HVAC systems were not yet optimized for a cannabis grow’s latent load, either, leading to plant health issues and forcing growers to rely on multiple technologies to manage humidity.

Indoor farms today have the benefit of being able to learn from the cannabis industry’s growing pains. Many design-build experts and consultants with hands-on indoor farming experience can inform your decisions, as it is often easier to dial back systems and controls from the extremes present in cannabis cultivation environments.

High-efficiency LED fixtures have drastically cut the sensible heat load compared to their HID predecessors. High-efficiency, specialized HVAC units able to manage both latent and sensible heat loads have become widely available. Even vertical racking units designed for cannabis grows (such as Pipp’s Vertical Grow Systems) have evolved from simple mobile shelving to sophisticated units that integrate in-rack airflow technology.

So, when designing an indoor farm make sure to budget for industry consultants and other subject matter experts no matter the crop you intend to grow.

Purpose Built is Easier than Retrofitting

In my time with Pipp, I’ve had the opportunity to help design countless facilities. Thanks to that experience, I can confidently say that building a purpose-built facility from scratch is much easier than retrofitting a space designed for another industry. Something as simple as column placement and spacing can greatly reduce your ability to leverage mobile vertical racks, cause airflow issues, and make it more difficult for employees to work with crops.

It’s important not to get enamored and purchase a location until you have a clear plan of what you want to build. For example, a site close to cheap utilities and a growing customer base may be rendered useless by the lack of outside or rooftop space for the HVAC equipment you will need to maintain your crop’s ideal climate. Similarly, an urban location may not have the parking space to accommodate staff adequately. While a seemingly silly reason to turn down an otherwise acceptable facility, keeping employees happy and safe will greatly reduce turnover. Designing a bespoke facility on a lot that meets your operational and employee needs can help avoid headaches when you’re up and running.

Additionally, older facilities may not have the necessary utilities (water, power, and/or natural gas) to support an indoor farm, and the costs to increase the amount of those utilities delivered on-site may exceed those for setting up new purpose-built connections. It’s important to engage with utility companies and city building departments as early as possible to identify existing and upcoming sites that are suitable for your grow at the scale you wish to build.

(Side note: Some sustainability-minded operators may think that lack of electricity may be easily supplemented by solar panels. However, it’s important to consider that every 8,000-10,000 square feet of cannabis canopy needs approximately an acre of solar power arrays.)

Build a Realistic Business Plan

Produce and floriculture growers already know how tight their margins are. Running an indoor farm that can’t reduce costs by relying on the most abundant source of natural light (the Sun) will be difficult in the best of circumstances. That’s why it’s important to adopt a “buy once, cry once” mentality when designing a facility and weighing which systems to adopt.

Many early commercial cannabis growers made that mistake. Trying to balance out the volatility risks of changing regulations and price drops, several cannabis operations value-engineered their builds by under-sizing HVAC units, opting for less efficient light fixtures, or selecting fixed vertical racking systems that didn’t allow them to maximize their floor canopy. The low CapEx investment led to higher OpEx costs and product quality issues, making them unable to compete with businesses that made larger CapEx expenditures and had lower operating expenses.

Due to the even tighter margins that exist outside of cannabis, indoor farmers have to go all-in by opting for the best systems they can afford. If budget constraints force you to make value-engineering decisions, aim to save money in areas that are easiest to retrofit, such as lighting fixtures. Many utilities will offer incentives for growers to adopt higher efficiency systems, making the most advanced systems more affordable when you’re ready to make the jump. However these programs usually expire, so growers cannot wait forever to make those upgrades.

HVAC systems and floor planning, on the other hand, must be done right the first time as those are harder, if not impossible, to change after the fact. An undersized HVAC system will constantly operate at near capacity, increasing energy costs and wear. Meanwhile, floor plan changes usually require facilities to shut down all or part of their operations to make the necessary fixes.

The lessons and similarities between the cannabis and broader CEA industry don’t end here. In part 2 of this blog series, we will explore lessons that cannabis operators can learn from their food and floriculture cousins. As these industries continue to co-mingle, CEA as a whole can achieve its potential to maximize efficiency, increase profits, and build a better food, pharmaceutical, and floriculture supply chain.

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Season 2 | Episode 30: Planting Density & Substrate Strategies

Summary:

This Cultivation Elevated episode primarily focuses on advanced cultivation strategies for cannabis indoors, covering topics ranging from substrate selection to irrigation strategies and environmental control.

Substrate Selection and Characteristics

Anders and Michael discuss various substrates used in cannabis cultivation, including rockwool and coco. Rockwool is favored for its consistency across batches and inert nature, making it suitable for precise nutrient control and advanced cultivation techniques under high light levels. On the other hand, coco is praised for its blend of steerability and risk mitigation, though it poses challenges due to variability between batches and potential issues with nutrient content.

Factors Influencing Substrate Choice

Consistency and Manageability: Rockwool is highlighted for its consistent performance and suitability for advanced irrigation strategies where precise steering of plant growth is crucial.
Steerability and Risk: coco offers flexibility but requires careful management due to variability in batch quality and nutrient content.

Plant Density and Irrigation Strategies

The conversation delves into optimal plant densities and their impact on cultivation outcomes. They emphasize the importance of tailoring planting densities to specific cultivars and optimizing them based on factors like light penetration, airflow, and irrigation needs.

Environmental Control and HVAC Sizing

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around HVAC system design and sizing. They stress the importance of basing HVAC requirements on canopy square footage rather than plant count due to the variability in plant counts during cultivation cycles. This approach provides flexibility and ensures that environmental conditions are adequately maintained regardless of changes in plant density.

Practical Tips for Growers

Irrigation Strategies: They recommend basing irrigation strategies on substrate volume per plant and per square foot to ensure adequate moisture levels and prevent aggressive dry backs overnight.
Microbial Management: Practical advice includes managing microbial risks during harvest, particularly with open-top coco substrates, to avoid contamination and maintain crop quality.

Advanced Cultivation Techniques

The speakers share insights into advanced techniques such as sub-canopy air circulation and under-canopy lighting to optimize plant growth and yield. They highlight the benefits of using specific substrates and configurations that support these techniques effectively.

Facility Design Considerations

The conversation concludes with considerations for facility design, emphasizing the importance of substrate choice, plant density, and environmental control systems in maximizing cultivation efficiency and yield.

Conclusion

Overall, this episode of Cultivation Elevated provides a comprehensive overview of advanced cultivation practices for cannabis, emphasizing the critical role of substrate choice, irrigation strategies, and environmental control in achieving optimal crop outcomes. Michael and Anders’ insights cater to both new growers and experienced cultivators looking to enhance their understanding and practices in indoor cannabis cultivation.