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!
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.
Photos are courtesy of Mr.Nice seedbank / CBD Crew (used with permission)
I have video of a car driving at 40 kilometers per hour alongside the plantation and it still takes one and half minute to get to the end. So we were absolutely lucky and got great weather. This is recreational approach to hemp farming, let’s say. This is the very first production. With 3 people and one tractor we were able to do 6 acres per day and this is 40 acres total 80.000 plants in Colorado. This is my first attempt and I had 80 acres available. At first it seemed disappointing that we won’t do whole 80 acres, but I assure you that when getting into caddy and driving through the field we were satisfied that we have planted only 40 acres. Actually this still makes my hairs on hand stand when I see it. This is the beginning in July. We build up enough clones to supply also 6 other smaller farms. 6 acres there, 8 acres there, with different farmers and different techniques, we have tried everything in that respect. We had achieved this year in America, what we have been trying to do in past 30 years in Europe. I changed my hat and from recreational grower got agricultural license for medical market. I started in 2002 in Europe and it was strange part of life. We have had department of agricultural to do the testing. I’ve got little bit nervous before harvest. Another video week before harvest and this is my plantation manager decided to use drone with GoPro camera. You can see that plants look same as they are traditionally done [bushes]. I’ve In first year we’ve already produced some spectacular results. There was nice security, we hadn’t problem or anything getting stolen, the only problem was the camera drone crashed when we hit the van :). So we have to find how to do it better next year. It would be easier for a guy to go through the field on the bike, but by that time he would had collected like half of kilo of hash before going to the other end :).
We have also cooperated with Colorado university for research. Market is opening so quickly in America. Many people had never have levels of CBD so consistent. This is CBD plant grown specifically under the hemp license in Colorado. So we are able to grow real pharmacy products. This is not a loop, this is real video. So we took responsibly this heritage and lifework of Howard Marks and the big change is that we are doing this legally. I’ll show you how CBD profile, THC and terpenes look like. From basic CO2 extraction that we did for Slovenia. People in Slovenia are growing CBD plants and working with seed crop but you can’t replicate this with seed crop everytime. Our argument is that whole plant should be selected first, cloned, kept alive and then you can make exatly same product with CBD and terpenes value and that plant becomes secret to the receipt. I can’t stress enough that right genetic and right laboratory testing is needed and then it is just farming. There is nothing difficult at all, nothing you can’t do that I’m doing.
