This week, a Massachusetts company announced it had gotten the OK from regulators to plant the East Coast\u2019s first outdoor commercial marijuana crop.<\/p>\n
Nova Farms, formerly named Bristol County Wellness Center or BCWC, announced the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission has given it the final approval to plant a crop in Sheffield, a community in the agriculture-friendly western edge of the state.<\/p>\n
Metro West Daily News<\/a>\u00a0reports that customers should get their hands on the product early next year when a dispensary attached to the farm opens on Route 9.<\/p>\n \u201cUtilizing the natural sun is the best way to grow cannabis,\u201d co-owner Blair Fish told Metro West. \u201cI think that the way that Mother Nature intended things to be was outdoors\u2026 It\u2019s just that the climate in New England isn\u2019t suitable to do that, so people have learned to grow indoors, and they really haven\u2019t explored the outdoor option.\u201d<\/p>\n The company started in January 2017 and initially planned to grow an indoor crop. Given that they now have the only outdoor crop licensed in the state so far, their price point is likely to be super competitive against the exclusively indoor offerings currently available. And of course, the lack of an electric bill isn\u2019t just awesome for consumers at the tail end, it\u2019s also great for the environment.<\/p>\n Nova Farms may not have the market cornered for long. Regulators have also given Theory Wellness permission to get the ball rolling in collaboration with a Sheffield farmer, but they are yet to receive the final approval Nova Farms just checked off its list.<\/p>\n Fish said the Nova Farms will be allowed to cultivate up to 80,000 square feet of canopy this year. If all goes to plan, they are hoping to harvest between 5,000 to 6,000 pounds this fall.<\/p>\n Fish also noted that Nova Farms is likely the first commercial outdoor cannabis crop on the East Coast.<\/p>\n The first \u201clegal\u201d cannabis crop on the East Coast might be considered the farm at the University of Mississippi, producing\u00a0the questionable herb<\/a>\u00a0that the National Institute for Drug Abuse uses in U.S.-based cannabis research, though Mississippi isn\u2019t technically considered a part of the East Coast region.<\/p>\n We reached out to the\u00a0National Cannabis Industry Association<\/a>\u00a0to ask if they had heard of anyone cultivating outside on the East Coast, they confirmed our suspicions and Fish\u2019s claim that it was indeed likely true Nova Farms has the first such grow. NCIA Media Director Morgan Fox went on to explain what the milestone means for the Massachusetts market.<\/p>\n \u201cThe regulated cannabis market is moving in the right direction towards sustainability by increasingly embracing outdoor and greenhouse cultivation,\u201d Fox told Cannabis Now. \u201cAs more states enact sensible cannabis policies and this option is made easier to pursue in already legal markets, and as lighting technology continues to improve, we will be able to decrease the energy consumption required for cannabis cultivation on a massive scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Crawford has been a Massachusetts cannabis activist for over 15 years and\u00a0frequently offers commentary<\/a>\u00a0on the industry as a patient advocate. He said he is concerned with the production costs going down in the supply chain, meaning that consumers on the end will see little benefit of the cut costs from outdoor cultivation, due to the general lack of access to shops and resulting lack of competition.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil more shops open, I still feel like even if this harvest were to come out and we got it in November, I still feel like the price just is not going to come down that much,\u201d Crawford told Cannabis Now.<\/p>\n Crawford believes the cost to open a dispensary in Massachusetts forces shops to charge top dollar when the doors finally get open.<\/p>\n We asked Crawford what he thought consumers had to gain from the outdoor crop coming to the state. \u201cI think people will be able to get some real organic product, that sounds very interesting,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, I don\u2019t think a lot of what we\u2019re getting in dispensaries is organic.\u201d<\/p>\n Crawford believes most of the cannabis transactions in the state still happen on the underground market.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0would you buy East Coast outdoor cannabis?<\/p>\n The post The East Coast Will Soon Get Its First Outdoor Commercial Cannabis Crop<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This week, a Massachusetts company announced it had gotten the OK from regulators to plant the East Coast\u2019s first outdoor commercial marijuana crop. Nova Farms, formerly named Bristol County Wellness Center or BCWC, announced the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission has given it the final approval to plant a crop inContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,5,6567,687,25,1419,2676],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35848,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847\/revisions\/35848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The First Outdoor Grow in the East Coast?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The East Coast Will Soon Get Its First Outdoor Commercial Cannabis Crop<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"