Hey @ethan! Thank you for doing this AMA! I’m going to ask one of your suggested questions – why DO you say “from the voices in [your] head?”
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Tech in the grow following areas.
First the grow itself for environmental controls. All the environment controls down to watering your plants.
Second is going to be accounting is going to support the grow. This is a tech issue because we need a non invasive way to record task performed by people back into the accounting.
Third we reached the point where we have enough big data sequencing of cannabis DNA that we can figure out progressive breeding programs. This is going to lead to the holy grail of see produced female F1 plants. This is going to cut our production cost dramatically.
last technology is going to allow us to quantify the potential secondary compounds that any given cultivar can produce. and we will be able to see how our grow measures up to other grows. My feeling is the people who can produce the most root hairs as a percentage of dry weight are going to win.
From the voices in my head
Ethan
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It comes from an old Yiddish expression of deep contemplative inner talk. My father said it in Yiddish, Isaac Asimov used the line as did Einstein. Rabbinic scholars would say this when thinking hard about how to apply laws to modern-day problems.
fun di kulus in meyn kop
פון די קולות אין מיין קאָפּ
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@memberdirectory, this AMA is jamming away! We’d love to have you pick the brain of @ethan and the voices in his head!
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When are the light producers going to give me lights I want? and not what they want to sell?
I want the light producers to do thin film chromatography on cannabis before I buy any lights. Prove to me that your light can match the absorption spectrum of my plants. I want every dollar in my production to go to the grow.
from the voices in my head Ethan
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I will be in Seattle. I have a pass from one of the vendors with my name on it. I am not trying to sell anyone product.
But, sanitation in our grows was always a big issue. Both production and post harvest. Cannabis is going to be just harder. But, we have good safe products. Look at a product like Oxine wt and its family of products.
Here we have the ability to keep our drip lines clean! I don’t have to have a full time person cleaning drip emitters. Look at a company like Netafim they make great products but there is still a labor element on the grower side. Oxine would have kept my drip lines clean. We ran 4.5 acers of drip lines all custom designed and about 80% from Netafim. I would guess we would have a full time person managing irrigation maintenance during the main season. Water quality in our grows is a serious problem.
Lets me add to this.
We have serious post harvest problems. We should not have any post harvest problems. We just are not leveraging what the food science people already know.
How many grows use freeze driers as part of your harvest operations? I solves lots of the problems we have. Plus, there is a freeze drier for every size grower. Its not just for the big guys.
I made my first freeze dryer in the 1990’s. I used a commercial freeze drier for cannabis in the early 1980’s it gives you a perfect bud. exactly the way you want it.
From the voices in my head.
Ethan
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Do you feel the issue of water quality is being seriously addressed?
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The big growers in floriculture and cannabis know there grows live and die by water. In many grows direct plant cost and labor. Water is the next biggest expense.
Small growers are not spending enough time on making sure there water is of a high enough quality. nor do they understand it changes month by month and week by week.
I tune my feed to the properties of my water for a location.
Kansas City water was like having rocks flow out of the pipe. The water was so hard and had such a high pH that we were forced to use phosphoric acid in our main irrigation lines. This forced us to account for phosphorus in our grow. All the off the shelf feeds had to be adjusted to compensate for the phosphorus in our irrigation water. We also had to rebuffer the water to use insecticidal soaps and things like neem oil or just plan supper refined vegetable oils.
So we don’t spend enough time worry about water.
If you hand water a commercial grow you are not spending the time in the correct place in the grow.
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Ethan, why do we see less than ideal solutions for temperature, relative Humidity and air movement in the grow space. Why is the equipment not purpose built, and why do those growers who buy this equipment think it will work? An example, the air flow over a coil is an engineers desire to produce a certain outcome, not one that produces an ideal air flow for any other function such as air movement in the room
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This is like a question out of my greenhouse structure design class in Collage.
There are a couple of points, grow rooms are different than greenhouse. Only in light control and temperature control.
Both have calculable Delta T loads for temperature, in both heating and cooling.
Greenhouses from the BIG manufactures have this down as a science, by the part of the country you live in. Nexus and Stuppy build great houses.
Grow rooms is just an issue over layout. The growers are not thinking about material handling. In the production. This is just a maturation issue.
The Grow room operators who get it right are going to have the highest gram per square foot week output with the most consistent product. But, there is a lot of hard science to professionally grow inside. They are also going to be the producers with the best chance of capturing the high end value in the market.
I want to find an indoor grown that is in the design phase and see if they have thought about growing and handling the product.
The grow room operator who figures out the whole vertical market is going put there kids through any ivy league collage they want.
From the voices in my head.
Ethan
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I ran the other road. Being born into a gorrilla grow family in NorCal. But thats a story for another time. You have dome amazing work. And it continues here. We are blessed to have you.
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Ethan,
I look forward to meeting you in Seattle.
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Ethan,
Many great topics…
Can you tell us, in your opinion what grower/producer issues are not being addressed as they should be… what needs to be pushed to the front of the line.
Thank you,
Tom
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I feel this for sure. Im testing out a lot of current lighting tech. While its pretty good. I feel like im missing something. Some level of control in the way my rooms are lit. Im sure build my own. But in all Honesty i just dont have time. Would rather have the professionals who have the right equipment to get it done…
Question is what are we missing youd like to see?
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Growers value VPD but they do not focus well on the control of vapor pressure in the grow space typically controlling it indirectly. Thank for your answer.
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My dad would say in yiddish “ lo-mich ales zain” let’s all of us see! You need to test this theory for water activity. A local cannabis lab can help you with this. Bo
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I don’t necessary think industry specific solutions are the answer.
We know how to heat and cool large office buildings. And in the USA we do it very well. For example Honeywell environmental solutions are major greenhouse players in Europe for HVAC controls. They cost penny on the dollar to the industry specific solutions. Honeywell, just uses a different sensor density greenhouses than in the people world. They also use a much higher quality humidity sensor, than we see anywhere.
The Missouri Botanical Garden, retooled it entire People and Greenhouse spaces using Honeywell as a vendor.
Until the equipment manufactures give me something unique, why pay a premium?
I remember when the first pH pens came on the market. They where expensive. Then we learned that it was cheaper to just through them out every quarter and buy a new one.
Look I purchased one of the very first computer based environmental controls systems. fully digital. about 20K in capital investment to control 16 points.
Today I can do the exact same thing with a Raspberry Pi for under $200 and some guy has written a program open source that will monitor and control 1024 points.
Why would I spend 20K for a 1K solution?
The bigger question is why are the environmental control manufactures not giving me what I want?
from the voices in my head
Ethan
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Where do you see the future of the cannabis industry in 5 years?
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