Medical marijuana has only been legal in Florida since 2016.
Though it’s a new industry, there are still guidelines for success.
The core principles of running a profitable business still apply to every vertical of the industry.
Farmers especially should have standard operating procedures in place and a system for recording data.
Most growers understand the benefit of tracking their crops.
A journal or whiteboard is the preferred data collection for many, especially smaller farms.
Ryan Moloney, CEO of Alef Agriculture in Michigan, shared this advice with the Cannabis Business Times:
“Diligently record the variables and points of measurement during every grow. After the run has been harvested, analyze this data to see what it tells you. Use this data to refine your processes for the next run.”
But as scale increases, whiteboards become cluttered and valuable ROI is often left on the grow floor.
This is where smart system management becomes essential.
Cannabis cultivation management platforms are emerging as game changers for growers.
It’s a recurring theme in Cannabis & Tech Today, finding automated solutions to take the guesswork out of monotonous tasks.
Data processing is vital if a cultivator wants to spend their time managing people and plants rather than numbers and metrics.
FolioGrow President Brett Strauss saw farmers struggling to analyze their operations and developed software to streamline the process.
“When you have all of this data available to you in realtime, rather than a bunch of spreadsheets that are always out of date, you can start making better financial decisions — like which strains are most profitable to you,” he said.
According to Strauss, there are four key measurements for assessing the profitability of a strain: which have the highest yield, harvest in the least amount of time, sell for the most per pound, and sell out the fastest.
“Your goal should be to consistently get the best return on those four measurements.”
He continued, “When you nail that down, that is your most profitable strain and should make up the bulk of your canopy.”
Strauss looks at strains like stocks, and mirrored FolioGrow software around the concept of a stock portfolio.
His strategy is to give growers as much information as possible about their crop, allowing them to “analyze the math of their grow” in real time.
Central to the software is establishing standard operating procedures.
Owners create templates to guide their team; staff then tracks how those procedures were performed and when, logging each step on their phone or tablet.
“It creates a trackable system for ensuring every task gets done the way you want it at the time it’s needed, and creates a trail of these actions. With that, you can do a postmortem on the process itself and then improve on it,” noted Strauss.
The system integrates with METRC and several third-party apps to create a compliant data ecosystem for growers.
Once Florida decides on a seed-to-sale provider, a quality cannabis cultivation management platform should ensure a smooth integration with any state-selected compliance software. ϖ
