In the mid-20th century, NASA embarked on ambitious projects to grow plants in space to provide astronauts with a sustainable food source during prolonged missions. These experiments led to significant advancements in indoor lighting and hydroponic systems, technologies that would later revolutionize agriculture in controlled environments on Earth.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't the food or floriculture markets that first picked up on these advancements, but rather illicit cannabis growers. Cannabis prohibition forced innovative cultivators to move their operations indoors to avoid detection. With legalization in states like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, the industry emerged from the shadows, bringing a wealth of expertise in controlled growing environments.
Early on, high cannabis prices meant growers could not lose money (barring a catastrophic crop failure). Data from Cannabis Benchmarks pegged average wholesale prices for a pound of cannabis flower at $1,789 in 2016, with average highs as much as $2,100. During this Green Rush, investment dollars flowed into purpose-built facility construction and retrofitting projects.
At the same time, indoor agriculture technology experienced a boom not seen since the Space Race. The advancements in LED lighting, mechanical cooling, environmental control and monitoring, and vertical growing technologies over the past decade can nearly all be tied to the growing cannabis market. Wholesale prices have since cooled (in 2023, the average wholesale price for flower was $1,019), yet cannabis remains a cash crop where innovation abounds.
In the decade that I've been involved in the cannabis and broader controlled environment agriculture (CEA) space, I've found that there is a misconception that these markets share few parallels. The cannabis cultivation market and the food/floriculture industries are mostly two sides of the same CEA coin, and there are insights and lessons that crop and flower producers can learn from cannabis growers.
Bridging the Gap between Cannabis and the Broader CEA Market
My experience as both a cannabis grower and Director of Horticulture at Pipp Horticulture has led me to develop a nuanced understanding of the CEA landscape and how cannabis fits within it as the outlier. To appreciate this, we should first zoom out and define what we mean by CEA and indoor farming.
Controlled environment agriculture is a technology-based approach to crop production that involves the control of most (if not all) plant growth variables. This includes lighting, temperature, humidity, irrigation, fertigation, airflow, CO2 supplementation, and more.
CEA can broadly be divided into two categories: indoor farms, and mixed-light structures. Mixed-light structures utilize both natural sunlight and artificial lighting to optimize plant growth. These facilities provide the benefits of natural light while allowing for environmental control through supplemental artificial lighting.
Keep reading about the CEA experience of Pipp's Director of Horticulture here
For more information:
Pipp Horticulture
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www.pipphorticulture.com