Sustainability is a Business as well as an Environmental Mandate
Horizontal OR Vertical cannabis cultivation – which one is better?
Hint: either is just a place to grow plants.
One of the questions that I get frequently is, “ Is vertical cultivation better than single layer cultivation?”
The answer, “it all depends” really irritates most people most of the time. But everyone - suppliers, growers, researchers, even hobbyists, - everyone, wants to know what system is the best.
So why, “it all depends”?
Suppliers and designers of grow systems can all tell you why their solution is better, but the conversation should really revolve around where their solutions fail or what are the limits of their solutions. Every system has a weakness and it’s not about greenhouse, outdoor, indoor or the metal used, the number of layers, the fertigation, the lights and on and on. The conversation is about crop genetics, budget, facility, geographic location, business and brand plans.
Vertical, horizontal – is just how you organize your space. “It depends” on business needs and realities.
With the shift to LED lighting for indoor and greenhouse grows the opportunity to create canopy based on cubic feet presents an opportunity that can’t be ignored. It forces a shift away from large plants to small or medium sized plants with high density plant spacing, (you really need to be careful with density, but that’s another conversation). What happens with the shift to smaller plants is a happy sustainability coincidence, more cycles per year, labor reduction for defoliating and harvesting, saving time and money, while producing a better product. What could be better for sustainability than a positive business and consumer outcome. Facilities that implement to two level planting for an initial vertical build outs are now moving to three level planting for the future phases.
With labor amounting to nearly two thirds of legal cannabis cultivation costs, building a correctly sited indoor operation and adopting a vertical solution that has the power to ease the adoption of process automation and save labor hours can greatly increase company efficiency, productivity and in the end its viability.
Vertical solutions allow operating facilities to expand and optimize production, control costs and improve product. In planned facilities every plantable cubic foot is just as valuable as floor space so don’t ignore the the potential efficiencies that going up brings.
Vertical growing space should be utilized whenever possible.
The combination of LED Lighting and Vertical Growing solutions have shown in vendor use case studies:
Decreased energy consumption per light fixture by 40 percent, going from approximately 1,100 watts per light to 660 watts per light
Reduced heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) load by approximately 35 percent per square foot of canopy
Reduced labor because of smaller plants in more layers (trimming, training , moving )
Reduced the cost per pound of finished product by 75 percent
More than doubled production per square foot; reduced land requirements by 50 percent
Increased crop yield by 157 percent while reducing water and fertilizer usage
Genetic improvement - use of smaller plants that match environment
Improved consistent, year-round flower quality and chemotype with denser trichrome development
Decreased cycle time on eight-week strains by up to 25 percent
reducing production time by 5 to 7 days for retail flower market and by 12 to 14 days for oil-extraction and derivatives markets
Any Cannabis Grow should utilize Data Collection, Automation and Intelligence – it’s a must have in a Vertical Grow! Leverage system design, automation and intelligence advantages.
We’re back to looking at a conversation about crop genetics, budget, facility, geographic location, business and brand plans, and trying to identify the challenges that automation can address. Data collection, sensors, machine intelligence, general use software, and cannabis-specific software offer opportunities for aligning business and sustainability outcomes.
Better product and business outcomes depend on:
Environmental monitoring
Plant health monitoring
Climate control
Lighting control
Irrigation and fertigation control
Water treatment
Genetics
Trimming
Transplanting plants
Moving plants
Automating as many of these processes as possible reduces the need for labor, increases growing capacity while a master grower uses experience to integrate this complex environment and produce the most desirable product possible. Automation decreases dependence on excess manual labor so businesses can focus on investing in more efficient employees with higher skill levels. Automation will also maximize energy, environmental and cost efficiencies of the vertical environment, provided everything is properly programmed and managed. Increasing employees skill levels and maximizing energy and environmental efficiency are all part of a Sustainable Development Goal plan.
Focus on data collection and analysis with a keen eye to pricing trends. Plan to produce for $100.00 per pound by looking at and adjusting: Energy (Light, HVAC, Humidity Management), Water, Nutrients, Genetics.
For example, a traditional HVAC and lighting system approach could make up forty-five percent (45%) of a facility’s operational costs, but a high- performance HVAC and lighting system evaluated during design could reduce operating costs to thirty percent (30%). Best Practices on HVAC for Cannabis Cultivation & Controlled Environment Agriculture, Resource Innovation Institute. https://ResourceInnovation.org/Resources
Outdoor, Greenhouse or Indoor
Where there is no regulatory restriction, geographically “there is not a specific turnover point” where one type of growing is the answer “Instead there is probably a gradual shift from a nearly natural to a fully controlled interior production climate” “In reality, the viability of the system as a whole does not solely depend on energetic performance. The efficiency of production and climate control systems is directly related to the availability of resources. At locations with scarce resources” indoor vertical environments “offer opportunities by assuring an efficient use of water and CO2 as well as a high production density” Comparison of resource use efficiency
It’s all about the balance of water, light, energy, heat, etc. over geographic and market location.
The emphasis should be on Local. Sustainability also depends on the efficient use of local resources such as water, energy, land and people. Analysis’ of vertical farmed greens shows that these facilities use some of these resources more efficiently than greenhouse methods and field methods. For example vertical farms lower overall CO2 output by 67-92% compared with greenhouses, and the CO2 difference with field crops is even larger.
As the market inches toward a national one, local production skips several steps in the supply chain, improves traceability of crops and overall reduces its agricultural waste.
Distance to processing facilities
Local energy and water realities
Local climate vs climate control needs
Accessibility to a labor market with appropriate local wages and skill in cultivation
Distant from populated areas in order to build local brand loyalty
Being as green as possible for your location can produce a unique market differentiator, and for many markets a vertical indoor environment ticks off many of the boxes in the list of Sustainable Development Goals.
Don’t be afraid to talk about how you grow your product. In a 2020 Accenture report, it was reported that 60% of people were making more sustainable and ethical purchases since the start of COVID-19, with nine out of 10 likely to continue doing so after the pandemic.
