The cannabis industry: a recipe for sustainability?
“Sustainability” has become a buzzword over the past several years, and often it means less than nothing. People like to slap the sustainability label on things that are actually far from sustainable.
The cannabis industry appears to be a big exception to the rule, however, for many reasons.
In fact, the cannabis industry, done right, could be a shining example for other industries of how to be profitable and sustainable at the same time, never having to sacrifice one thing for another.
With cannabis, it’s not hard to put together an operation that not only makes a profit and provides needed employment in these troubled times, it can also be a net positive to the environment in just about every way.
Cannabis is the very definition of low-consumption
Cannabis is just about the cheapest crop to grow one can imagine. This is true for more than one reason as well.
The plant itself is hearty and robust and grows quickly. Because of this robustness, in fact, the plant generally requires no outside agents whatsoever in order to thrive and come to harvest quickly.
Companies such as Medcolcanna (NEO:MCCN) generally don’t need to do anything more than tilling the soil to plant the crops at their two Colombia locations, for example.
No chemicals whatsoever are used during the growing process, and they still get an amazing four harvests of healthy crops per year (due to Colombia’s amazing climates for growing crops), with little to no effort. In fact, at the smaller of the two facilities, the crops are hand-picked, since cannabis is also incredibly easy to harvest.
In fact, cannabis is one of the few crops in human history that can be said to have actually improved soil quality in many cases. It has even been used and further proposed as a solution for cleaning up contaminated soil. Apparently cannabis can be as good for the soil as it can be for our bodies!
Most crops, especially staple crops and other things like tobacco, are famous for quickly depleting soil quality, and this is the big elephant in the room regarding sustainability people are often not willing to talk about.
Very few things provide more benefit per physical area than cannabis can
This is mainly because cannabis as a crop has so many uses.
Besides the obvious psychoactive and non-psychoactive medicinal and palliative benefits of cannabis-derived products, cannabis crops can be used for so many other purposes it makes the mind spin. Parts of the cannabis plant, in turn, can be used for everything from soap to rope!
In fact, at the time of this writing, the author honestly can’t think of anything that requires less energy footprint to provide more benefit to humanity.
