Thibault's portion of Thursday's class was particularly relevant and inspiring for me as I am entering the cannabis cultivation business post-GSB. Thibault is clearly a well-educated scientist with an incredible product and suite of offerings. I am curious how successful his business will be because he is trying to sell into an industry that doesn't know they need his product, which presents a litany of marketing and sales challenges. Because of that, I anticipate that he will have incredible success selling into the cannabis industry, which is entirely a green playing field (pun intended) with entrepreneurs looking to distinguish their products from what could become a commoditized agricultural industry.
What's interesting to me, and a potential challenge for Thibault, is that unlike vines and grapes, cannabis can be cultivated indoors in order to control more environmental variables and remove the need for herbicides and pesticides. I spoke with Thibault about this difference between cannabis and grapes and he said that the reason this can't be done with vines is the incredible size of grape vine roots. With cannabis, roots have a relatively shallow ground penetration, especially when compared to the deep soil penetration of grape vines (recall the story about grape vines going down hundreds of feet into a cave!).
This is a great opportunity for Thibault's business; although I wonder how he will handle the choice of expanding into a new, and potentially different, vertical.
hello Georges,
ReplyDeleteI would like to clarify what I had in mind: with indoor cultivation, you often "bathe" the plant roots into a nutrient rich solution which sometimes circulates at a specific rate. This cultivation design does not allow for water deficit to kick in easily. However, like other sources of environmental stresses, water deficit can be imposed and maintained to a desired level. Quantifying the level of water deficit is useful as water deficit triggers the activation of complex metabolic pathways leading to some flavorful compounds (thus the simplistic idea that dry farming is "better"). That is why today, the wine industry is interested in tracking subtle variations of water status at the plant level. In turn this knowledge helps to better characterize site effect or season effect on wine quality. At this point in time, I am not sure whether this would be as relevant for indoor conditions.