Hi all, I’ve recorded Shantibaba’s lecture at Cannafest fair that was very inspirational and would like to present it to you in written form. Its written in rough form as recording was not audible well in parts. Also it is about hour and to write it takes a time, so I plan to divide it into more articles and do 6 part series from it :)… Enjoy!
See my Cannafest Photo report here
Many thanks to Shantibaba and Liz and Line from CBD Crew for their presentation!
Redacted text:
Unfortunately, Howard Marks passed earlier this year. He was one of biggest cannabis advocates and ultimate marijuana diplomat on the sceen for many years. Before he passed away I [Shantibaba] promised to continue his work to do best. Despite many negative things happened in 2016 it looks like it will be best year in my [Shanti’s] plant and extraction career and for whole CBD Crew.
Looking back I’ve started in 2003 in Switzerland and nowadays everything moved to USA with all the licences for growing. I’ve just got recreational license in state Washington to produce high THC and high CBD plants so practically anything [can be grown and bred there]. Everything is kept under control [of government], everything has bar codes on it. We’ve got two other licenses in Oregon and Colorado which allow to grow cannabis plants under 0.3% THC. Practically anything under 0.3% THC is considered hemp in America. We must provide samples to be tested in scientific fashion.
We made selection from plants to select very high CBD variety. It was plant in greenhouse and laboratory tests found roughly 0.5% THC and 16% CBD. Then we took a little bit risk and cloned it 200.000 times and took it to our outdoor crop under hemp license. We put it in ground. All the flavinoids, terpenes, everything that is inside the plants and we believe that whole plant is important. Not only CBD. When synthesized all other components are taken away. We haven’t reached research level so we can explain why whole plant is working better than isolated substances. Because the research is going on only the last 10 years. There are number of very small amounts of different compounds in the plant besides THC and CBD that are hard to measure. We took terpenes and flavinoids from fresh plants, then did a cannabinoid and essence extraction and then return it on the end of the chain to make whole plant extract to put in our medicine. In Czech republic and Hungary many farmers are usually growing low-THC low-CBD low-terpenes plants to produce extractions that go to pharmaceutical market. This is little bit against our principle because genetics of the plant is more important and it is crucial use high terpen profile, then go down with THC and up with CBD to keep integrity of all terpenes in plant. This is finding we’ve got after getting feedback from many medical patients.
What we did? We came from the standpoint of recreational cannabis and became hemp farmer. Based on one plant with all the terpenes involved we planted that 200.000 clones in Colorado and Oregon plantages risking that if we don’t get that 0.3% we are risking destroying whole crop. We had started with one mother plant in October 2015 and then replicating it till March. To get 200.000 clones you obviously need a lot of mother plants and some structure. However we had 7 farms set up and during January, February and March produced the clones. So this is our recreational approach to hemp farming.
…To be continued