Hey GNET, Quick question

[ethan]

@Farmer_Dan

Metrc requires that I weigh every single plant and seperate them by harvest batch per day. My employee and I can harvest, weigh, and hang 1 row of one cultivar (about 250 plants) per day. Then I dry it, and remove stems and most of the water leaf, which I also have to weigh and record. Then we package, weigh, and record. To close a batch you record water loss which is just wet weight minus waste minus package weight. We then pull of the that data into excel and make pivot tables for various uses to evaluate the year versus other years.

Where do you tie to your chart of Accounts?
Do you use Quick Books?

[Farmer_Dan]

Yes, we use Quickbooks for bookkeeping.

[ethan]

@tsunamitropicalsltd

Poinsettias, actually a tropical plant, are grown this way for the holiday market and they have the same day length issues that Cannabis has when it comes to timing their flowering.

I never want to grow another poinsettia. One year I was responsible for producing 10 million cuttings. Just managing the cost accounting was a killer. Oh the old days.

[Farmer_Dan]

@ethan

One year I was responsible for producing 10 million cuttings.

Can you tell us about the logistics of making this happen?

[supergrower_matt]

@Farmer_Dan that sounds kind of arduous to get your data calculated. It’s an important piece in understanding the outcomes of all of your tests and production efforts.

As you continue to expand both trials and production, I’d think that gets really unwieldy to scale with. Do you agree?

[Farmer_Dan]

It is required by law, and if I didn’t have to do it, I would not do it, but it does make some nice data. For reference, I believe 2 people could harvest at least 500 plants in the same amount of time without checking every plant in by tag number and weight. If it weren’t for @geoshepard and their automated scale, we would probably only get 125-150 done in a day with hand writing and a floor scale, or we would need 2 more people to get 250 done.

[ethan]

Dan,

Let me find the old metrics on Hemp harvesting from the war years. I will post them here might be of some use for you.

[Farmer_Dan]

I’d love to read it.

[supergrower_matt]

So glad to hear that you’re using @geoshepard. They have a solid weigh-to-record system and integration with METRC for data capture. I definitely hear you on the pains of compliance reporting, and I bet that software helps in easing that burden.

I’m wondering if your setup would make you a viable client for supergrower, too. We have some similar cross-over functionality as geoshepard, like a METRC integration for all plant/batch movements, but our focus is on giving you a true data center for real-time reporting and it includes a built-in CRM system as an added benefit.

We’ve been interested in exploring possible further integrations with other systems that would allow a scale, like geoshepard’s to also transmit that weight from scale to software directly. (The world is a SaaS oyster on this one).

[Farmer_Dan]

I have looked at integrating software at the last expo that I attended, but our needs are very specific and the software I have seen covers things I would never need and don’t want to pay for. Most seem geared toward retail, which seems like a nightmare from a compliance standpoint. A farm operations specific platform could save us some time.

[supergrower_matt]

Dan,

You basically just described what we do. Cultivation catered software solution. I just had a pretty extensive chat with @ethan the other day, and one of the best things we boast is the easy to adjust flexibility of tracking data how you want it and without paying someone a fortune to do it for you.

We also are super cheap compared to a lot of the other players out there. If you’re serious about a possible integration, let’s talk more offline. The worst you could say is that it’s not what you’re looking for, right?

[Farmer_Dan]

Sounds good. I’ll give it some thought on things we would like metrc to do that it doesn’t do.

One example of things I hate about metrc is how metrc assigns tags. It is by creation of clones and date. Since cloning is all staged over months and I do blocks of each cultivar at the same time, when I auto populate tags I have to hunt for blocks of tags for a harvest batch to put on the plants. It would be a time saver to assign tags in a full sequence. To get this out of metrc requires manual entry of 3300 plant tags, it is faster to tag hunt 50 to 100 at a time, which is also a waste of time, but less so. It would be nice to pull metrc data of start stock, tell it to assign tags 1-500 to cultivar X, 501-1000 of Y, 1001-1500 of Z, etc.

I have other examples, but will make a list of wants and we can talk later.

[ethan]

@Farmer_Dan

list of wants and we can talk later.

Programmers love lists. @supergrower_matt, definitely is moving growing software in the correct direction.

I want to automate my growers notes. And tie them back to the batch, if it’s in a container my ideal is tracking to the container. How many times did some touch it. How nmuch did that touch cost, was that touch needed. What was my shrinkage at each stage. If I need 100 saleable plants I don’t want 99 or 101 I want 100. How many cuttings of a cultivar x does it take to get 100 saleable plants. How many stock plants or seedlings do I need. How many square feet in the propagation room. If I grow 10% less of x, I can have 30% more of y by starting a x a week later.

These are the things I track. This is the level of grower detail I want and need to run a successful horticultural concern.

He’ll some farms know how many pound of nails are in the barn and how many wiggets they have before the next order.

[supergrower_matt]

Sounds good.

If I’m understanding the tagging issue correctly, we’ve already built out the “aspirin” for that headache in a number of ways.

Just reach out when you’re ready to talk.

[Farmer_Dan]

I’ll put together a detailed list, passively as I relax over the holidays, and we can discuss issues in greater detail.