Josh Schneider has achieved horticultural all-star status with his work in the ornamental and agricultural sectors of the global plant business. His experience founding and managing the global supply chain for the Global Breadfruit and 20+ years of hands-on experience in retail and wholesale international horticultural provided him with the expertise to build a reliable hemp supply chain. He joins Joy Beckerman from HempAce International to discuss Cultivaris Hemp's mission to provide the best hemp varieties to farmers and growers across the country. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/josh-schneider
Josh Schneider has achieved horticultural all-star status with his work in the ornamental and agricultural sectors of the global plant business. His experience founding and managing the global supply chain for the Global Breadfruit and 20+ years of hands-on experience in retail and wholesale international horticultural provided him with the expertise to build a reliable hemp supply chain. He joins Joy Beckerman from HempAce International to discuss Cultivaris Hemp's mission to provide the best hemp varieties to farmers and growers across the country.
https://podconx.com/guests/josh-schneider
Joy Beckerman: [00:00:26] Well, welcome to Hemp Barons today. Josh, thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for having me, Joy. Now, listen, we both know this Rick Fox from Marista and Farms, who is just we're very lucky to have an Hemp that he's Denna, an interviewee here on Hemp Barons and just brings so much to the industry. And he cannot say enough about you, sir, and all that you bring to us as this versatile, valuable crop reemerges and establishes itself in the broad light of day once again among America's agricultural crops. You bring at least 20 years more. You actually bring more than 20 years, from what I understand, of a hands on experience in retail and wholesale, international horticultural industries. And also, of course, this global global sales and supply chain acumen that you bring in addition to your being a breeder and a tissue culturists, which is something we need so much in Hemp. You have the CEO and founder of Virus. Please tell the listeners let's start what's called the virus does. And then I want to get into you. What brought you to Hemp?
Josh Schneider: [00:01:35] Great. Well, again, thanks for having me, Joy. I'm really excited to be here. And Rick Fox is one of my favorite people. He and I together did a lot of good work in Washington, helping encourage, shall we say, to the USDA in the best possible direction for the industry, quietly and firmly using good science and good, sensible policy. And so. I, I, I have I have been in horticulture since nineteen ninety two. Ninety two. Yeah. My first job at a garden center and greenhouse was filling flat for people to put seedlings into. That's some backbreaking work, but it was very educational. A few years later, I started my own garden center and greenhouse where we grew about 7000 different varieties of plants, collectible plants and conservatory plants. So with that many plants, you learn a lot about about the broad need of plant production. I ended up going to work in two thousand four proven winners and one of their partner companies, Euro American propagators. And that's what brought me from my my hometown in central Illinois to San Diego, California. And I worked in product development and sales and marketing for proven winners, proven winners with the company that took vegetative, clumsily propagated ornamental plants that you'd find in garden centers internationally until until proven winners came along. Most ornamental plants were grown from seed and seed breeding had focused on what was convenient for the grower, not how the plants performed for the gardener. And so proven winners took a very different direction and said, we care primarily about garden performance.
Josh Schneider: [00:03:41] And just because it's difficult to make work for the greenhouse grower, that's not a good enough reason not to go forward with it. And so that's focus on garden performance was revolutionary and everyone said it wouldn't work. And today, I think proven winner sells about 200 million plants a year in the US. At Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart and every independent garden center in the country. I managed about 50 feet. It was us. It was a big it was a big job. But I managed about 50 plant breeders around the world. So we helped them determine the characteristics that they wanted. Sometimes we helped decide what. Genera and species they were working on and then help them do selection work. We moved the plants around the world. We trialed them in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and all over Europe and chose the best varieties that performed in each region. And so that gave me a really great portfolio of experience in in how the breeding process works and and also cleans stock. And so that's where the tissue culture side comes in. And that's that's the approach that I've brought to Cultivar Hemp. I, I know that there's a lot of variety in my experience. And part of the reason we chose the name Cultivar was because it's from Cultivar in Latin meaning or in the nomen cloture system. A cultivar means a cultivated variety. Yes. And that is called cultivated variety is it's what goes on in my brain.
Joy Beckerman: [00:05:31] And just just to insert quickly here, you know, it says it's interesting to me. I have been involved in the Cannabis movements for for over 30 years. And in Hemp, we discuss Hemp as cultivars and varieties. Now, I realize that we could also call them Keema virus. We could call them Strain's. But I prefer to discuss Hemp types as varieties and cultivars. And then Saiz, the terms, chemo, Evars and strains for other types of Cannabis. Just in terms of vernaculars. So as we as we, you know, develop a dictionary that in terms that we can all rest on. So I very much appreciate you saying that because in Hemp all around the world, I mean, if you went to Canada, where they've only just recently legalized, you know, passed their Cannabis act and so on and so forth. We're talking about Hemp to Hemp farmers would be like, what? I mean, they would get it. But it's just not the common vernacular for the Hemp crop.
Josh Schneider: [00:06:31] Yeah, it's this is one of my pet peeves about the Cannabis industry. In my experience, it's not that Cannabis people don't know anything. It's just that so much of what they know simply isn't true. And so what I mean by that is the term. I mean, it's I can't tell you how often I'm beating my head against the table, arguing with some bro who's decided that his one success and a 15, 100 square foot shed somewhere gives him expertize to charge five thousand dollars a day to farmers growing one hundred acres of Hemp. That's that's not how I roll.
Joy Beckerman: [00:07:14] It is important for Hemp farmers to get advice from from folks who have experienced in Hemp or in agricultural crops. You know, it's a it's interesting because because, you know, the reality is that and we want and we want all forms of Cannabis to be considered agriculture. We want folks getting into all of those industries to have all of the tax benefits of being involved in agriculture. And yet, at the same time, many, many states force marijuana or adult and medical use cannabis into a horticultural role which does not have those tax benefits to it. And so it's an interesting double hat where as an advocate, I'm saying consider them to be agriculture. And then as as a Hemp industry leader, I'm saying, but please stay in your Yanes. You want to be agriculture, but be agriculture for adult use and medical Cannabis. And please let Hemp agriculture stay with Hemp experts if they they're not the same crop and they are for the most part, have very many different uses, obviously outside of.
Josh Schneider: [00:08:21] Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent. And I didn't mean to. No, not at all. It's I am with you Joy. My problem is that I actually have a lot of experience and a lot of different sectors of plants in various capacities. So working with pharmaceutical companies, working with supplements companies, working in tropical agriculture. I grew up on a corn and being farm. We had a two acre vegetable garden that was exclusively my responsibility. I was the oldest and the only boy. And so my sisters were like, now there's bugs out there. We're out. So I. I love to curate variety and I like to learn. And so I seek out plant nerds and single genus nerd. And so I have my group of Cannabis people that I just adore and trust because they are evidence based people, not not superstition based people. And so every group that I put together on Hemp, I always. Try to get a as I call him, you've got to have your weed bro's involved and then you got to have your astronomic farmers involved and working together. Is the best way to have success. I put together a group up in northern California. That was some some weed brose that we're looking to diversify into Hemp some farmers that we're looking to get out of prune apricots and olives. And then there was a bunch of Mennonites. And the strangest and most beautiful thing that happened was everybody was looking at each other with side eye in the beginning. And by the end, you had all the men. And I thought with the weed brose under the tree, smoking some joints. After the meeting, the Mennonites obviously weren't smoking. But we're asking questions and contributing.
Josh Schneider: [00:10:16] And so this group coming together has just done some really good work. And I'm so impressed with how they've the opportunity, especially in today's divisive world where everybody's camp air can't be. And the fact that Hemp is bringing people together around agriculture is something that just warms my heart and makes me smile because agriculture is desperately in need of that.
[00:10:43] And it is really it's the great synthesizer for Sizer.
[00:10:48] And let's not even get started. What happens when we add Hemp to industrial Saelens encodings or building materials or body care, and you might call it synthesizers, even all the properties of those. It is the great synthesizer, both figuratively, literally, spiritually, physically. It is just wonderful. And I love that you say that, too, because a lot of the folks, the farmers that really started and rooted the Hemp industry in Canada, a beautiful Jewish woman, Bruce Shamai, and also several Mennonites that are really, you know, pumping out agricultural Hemp. So Hemp stone for grain up there.
Joy Beckerman: [00:11:27] And it's just it's fascinating coming together. It doesn't just Breece.
Josh Schneider: [00:11:32] Yeah. No. I think it's why I love those stories, Joy, because I work with a group in Tennessee that is working with Amish farmers who grow tobacco. I mean, the irony is. And so they are now doing a percentage of each of their their acreage in smokeable flower. And they're doing a great job with it.
Josh Schneider: [00:11:54] My first job, that first job in 92, was actually at a Mennonite owned greenhouse. So I so enjoy that. But being around folks that have a more simple and different approach to life, I like different people. And it's been such a delight in Hemp. I spent the last 10 years working in Africa on a project. I started with a crop called Breadfruit because it was discovered by Captain Cook in the seventeen hundred. And he said that it was just this extraordinary crop that could feed people and do so much for humanity. And so my team worked hard to develop a tissue culture protocol to propagate the traditional varieties from the South Pacific. And so over the last 10 years, I've planted a half a million trees and 52 countries. A lot of those countries I was in myself. I was actually in Liberia during the Ebola crisis. It's been a once all the people are dead. I'll write a book when they can't come get me. But if agriculture has been a ticket to the kind of life I never would have imagined for my kids when I was a kid, I, I, I thought farming was just so boring.
[00:13:13] Corn and beans and flat central Illinois. And I stayed three weeks with with at the home of the president of Nigeria. I've dealt with warlords and escaped death narrowly on so many occasions. You would just not believe and I my life has been I. I mean, I'm forty seven, but I started early and I'm so glad that Hemp has come to the surface because now all of my African teams are pivoting to Hemp and food and fiber Hemp can be so extraordinarily valuable for Africa, for building materials alone, but for food and medicine. These are things in short supply and irregular supply. So we've got a project we're setting up in Zambia later this year for Roslyn Hemp production. In fact, Summer Rik's varieties. We'll be going over there. And I just I am thrilled to be able to to be a part of the early stages of this movement because I think it can do so much good for the Earth, for the farm economy, and it can point us in a new direction. But I know that I'm preaching to the choir.
Joy Beckerman: [00:14:30] No, no. So what do I want to make sure that the listeners really understand the services, an end or products that cult the virus provides? Could you give us sort of the overview of what the virus does and provide for sure?
[00:14:48] Based on my experience and ornamental plant in the ornamental plant business, I saw some opportunities when I first started in the mid 90s. Everybody that was growing ornamentals, geraniums, petunias, et cetera, held their own mother stock. Then Federal Express came along and it was easier to move plants around as rooted or unrooted cuttings. And what that did was like the Colombian exchange when Christopher Columbus came here. It'll it it loosed a bunch of diseases vectored through insects or humans on plants because of the movement. So as the movement of plants increases, so does the disease profile. Within two years, virus and other bacterial and fungal diseases had swept through and destroyed the mother stock systems that were, quote, vertically integrated every little garden center. Greenhouse had their own mother plants and did their own propagation with the with the advent of tissue culture. Clean stock. Where are we? And it only works using mirror schematic tissue culture, not nodal culture. There's a big difference. But we were able to to clean plants of their viruses and we set up this entire clean stock system because our plants were being killed by these viruses and they were wiping out livelihoods. I saw the same thing happening in Hemp and Cannabis hotplates and roid hop stuck by roid rabbits, mosaic virus, Alfalfa's Mosaic Virus. There's all these viruses that can cause real problems. And the problem is that the Hemp and Cannabis industry don't have a clean stock system and they don't understand how important sanitation and starting out with clean stock each year. That virus index tested using two PCR and RNA sequencing. And since I had that experience, I knew that I could set that up in the Hemp industry.
Josh Schneider: [00:16:51] And so our facility, what we offer is pathogen indexed, clean stock that has all gone through tissue culture and it's stored in tissue culture. And each year we bring the mother stock out of tissue culture and grow it into mother plants. I don't believe that you should go straight from tissue culture to cultivation because you need time for the plant to level off after coming out of p.c. So we bring those plants out and we establish a new block of clean stock. Every four months over the course of the season. So we're just in the midst of establishing our new group of late summer fall stock. And what we've been propagating on for the last three months will be dumped. And so as a grower, as a farmer, if you start the season out with clean stock that is free of viruses, even if it gets infected over the summer, which it's likely to do because insects transmit these viruses. It won't kill the plants before you can harvest. But if you start with stock that was held over from last year and has a latent viral infection and most viruses, you cannot see the the symptoms until it's too late. And you cannot cure a plant of a virus. There's nothing you can do except Maris dramatic tissue culture to eliminate that virus. And that takes 12 to 24 months in vitro of repeated Mariska schematic culture. So and if we get off onto the seed side, all I'll do some. Criticism of that. But my my opinion is that the seed line has not been established, established long enough to be true to type.
Josh Schneider: [00:18:51] So they don't breed. True. I think that's a risk.
Joy Beckerman: [00:19:41] Indeed, I mean, that's the big issue here. And we talk about it a lot on this show are the exploitation of farmers, some of the most trusting people in the world, doing the heaviest listing for us.
Joy Beckerman: [00:19:55] As we often say, without the top six inches of soil and rainfall, we would all be dead. So farmers are the heroes of the world and a human survivor. They take all the risk. They are doing this without federal crop insurance. For the most part. I understand that it just became available to us this year and we're very grateful for that. Having said that, the deadline to apply was March 16th. There was a three week window to do it and you needed to have a contract in place as part of your application materials. So meanwhile, farmers are still in this now when it comes to oil, seed and fiber crops. As you well know, there are established certified pedigreed seeds all over the world now. And side note, as you well know, it doesn't mean that a certified pedigreed seed in northern Canada is going to grow so beautifully in Kentucky. And in fact, we found that they don't. And we're moving those things forward. But the point is, when it comes to the aircraft varieties, that's new. I've been an Hemp for 30 years and an extract varieties of Hemp hit us like a ton of bricks, blindsided us about six and seven years ago. So they have not had time to be bred into unique, distinct and stable varieties. And thus these unscrupulous seed sellers are selling magic beans to farmers, telling them everything they want to hear. Seventeen percent CBD zero T. c. 97 percent germination rate, totally feminized. And none of that is true.
Joy Beckerman: [00:21:23] And it's all lies. Yes, it's all lies. It's fly.
Josh Schneider: [00:21:28] It's so frustrating to me. I joy. I have six farmers who would not listen to me that CBG was overblown and that there is no way that the seed line could be as stable as people are claiming. And all six of them bought CBG from some big name companies and some smaller companies. And on average, among the several thousand seeds they did test germ's on, 30 percent of them were high THC at six percent or more.
Joy Beckerman: [00:22:01] It's unbelievable. And this we're talking. There were 10 to 20 percent male Rosses struction is what we're talking about with non-compliant crops.
Joy Beckerman: [00:22:09] As you well know, I mean, short and negligent. I mean, that's into the negligence territory, which can put you in jail and negligent and negligence on top of it.
Joy Beckerman: [00:22:19] You know, but but what's worse, when we talk about the males. Of course, nobody is expecting the males to pop up. And yet there they are. So now labor force plus money or hermaphrodite or hermaphrodites.
Joy Beckerman: [00:22:34] And you're and you're paying people that was nowhere near in your business plan as a farmer working on the smallest possible margin that you that you've even had in your business plan or your budget, the ability to pay a labor force throughout the summer to do the laborious task of identifying and pulling males and hermaphrodites.
Josh Schneider: [00:22:52] Yes. And if and you're assuming that they're going to get it all and I will tell you, I don't know anybody who's gotten them all. And so what happened was most of the crop that went from seed last year had plenty of seeds on them. And so I know a guy who who ordered in the garbage variety, I won't say what it is, but there were at least 12 distinct vinos inside this variety. He sells them and made 20 million seeds. And he's like, can you help me sell him? And I said, no. And I think you're on ethical. I don't. I want to see your inbred parent line for at least 20 generations before I'd even consider. And so I chose to do clone only production. And that's why I loved working with Rick and Janet Marista. They had created a bunch of hybrids that they selected themselves that were distinct. And so and I've got phenotypes and stuff like Chardonnay or Berry Blossom. Everything we we do was was selected either by an experienced Cannabis breeder. And so the beauty of breeding for clonal production is you only need one great plant. And so then I put that plant and tissue culture, keep it from getting infected, multiply it out. And I want to give farmers, in my opinion, I can lay claim to being one of the fathers of breadfruit. And my original idea was it's a basketball sized fruit that produces a potato on a tree two to three thousand pounds a year.
Josh Schneider: [00:24:21] And you can make a gluten free flour out of it. And so my idea was farmers in the tropics can make money selling gluten free flour to American ladies that think they're gluten intolerance. And this will help everybody. But also, I had to know what it took to get a market off the ground because I was working with the plant. No one had ever heard of. And there was no market for it. So I have restaurants in Ghana who use it for French fries. Hawaii is full of breadfruit or Zulu, as they call it. French fries. Potato chips. Gluten free flour. Bread, cake, cookies. So we need to have the farmer's. A sure bet they should not be speculating. And I think especially this year, any cultivation with seed is some additional speculation that I don't think is worthwhile. And I know there's great seed breeders out there. I know some of them personally. They're my friends. We work with them. We help them do virus index and cleaning up their mother, stock their breeding lines because some viruses and viruses or pollen transmissible to seed isn't going to save you from that. And I'm a big supporter of this. Some of the seed breeding companies actually give me their Fenosa to sell vegetative land. And we capture a small royalty forum so that they can make money off of their crop, that they're not under pressure to release the variety early before it's really ready and leave farmers holding the bag.
Josh Schneider: [00:25:49] And so I think for the first few years, right this year, because there's so much seed on the market and everybody has dropped their price so drastically, that's creating moral hazard, that's pulling more people into cheap seed and away from clones. But what our bright spot has been is our smokeable flower program, which some of Rick's Maris varieties are in that program.
[00:26:12] And we have our Purple Masr program, which just is a fantastic assortment of old school mentality of Cannabis breeding where we have Hemp varieties that have amazing look, smell and taste. The bag appeal is high. They may not be as productive as something like Spectrum or T1, but the product that they produce is so far superior. And to me, if you're doing an acre or two acres, you should be doing more. You should be more focused on smokeable flower because the biomass market is so complicated right now that it's difficult to be profitable in that market without the loop closed. My team also is working on developing relationships so that the people that we work with that are growing our varieties, our young plants, they don't like the word clone because it's not, again, technically accurate. In a tissue culture standpoint, a clone is a narrower categorization than even a cultivated variety. So the young plants are clones that we grow in our greenhouses. We are working to find customers for our customers. Flower because I believe in closing the loop as much as possible. So I'm working with supplement companies, smokeable flower people, pre roll. people and a lot of cottage businesses that want access to a reliable supply of high quality smokeable flower grown by. Farmers, not just giant companies that seem to be in a bankruptcy eight ball situation. And so this is this is my goal, is that Cultivar Hemp supports the farmer from beginning to end.
Josh Schneider: [00:28:11] We have a team of educators, of experienced farmers in Hemp, agronomists, pathologist and molecular biologists that help us support our customers all the way through the season. And hopefully we're as we're getting more of these deals done for smokeable flower and biomass. We have people that we can send our our young plant customers to. And these customers, these people will give them contracts to buy their flower. So we're really trying to create a more closed loop system. I don't like vertical integration and Cannabis. I don't think it works very well. It's it's a solution. Yeah, it's a solution to something that people think it's going to solve a problem, but it's a solution that is unnecessary. It's not matched to the problem. And so a lot of times in the Cannabis industry, there are solutions out there looking for a problem. And I kind of go the opposite way and sending my life working with farmers, whether you're growing flowers in a greenhouse, breadfruit in the field, or soybeans on a flat piece of ground. What I want is to make sure the farmer has what they need to be successful. And I want to help support that very grassroots level of cultivation because I know so many people whose lives could be dramatically impacted if they can make an extra twenty thousand dollars over the summer, growing a little patch Hemp.
Joy Beckerman: [00:29:43] Absolutely. Because I've worked for years with Hemp production services in cattle in Canada, of course. And and, well, Canadian breeders are getting into a little bit, very slowly extract Hemp, because as you may well know, Hemp growers, even though this country is Canada, has been regulating the crop as an agricultural commodity federally with crop insurance since nineteen ninety eight. It was only until the passage of the Cannabis Act and then regulations being written and enacted that Hemp farmers for the first time are now allowed to, as long as they go through the more rigorous medical probe, the marijuana program licensing program up there, they can't do it as a Hemp process or extract Hemp for cannabinoids. They can do it as a marijuana prep process there. So it's still very highly regulated there. But in any event, point being, it's not like they've been super focusing on extract varieties of Hemp breeding unique distinct varieties up there. They've been focusing on grain because Canada and I do hope we catch up very quickly here. But Canada became the world leader in bulk Hemp grain food ingredients, pulled prest, oil, held seeds, protein powder, et cetera. And so his products and services, in any event, they prove what you're talking about doing, what you're what you're doing with called the virus for extract varieties enough.
Joy Beckerman: [00:31:08] I'll get to my question in a second. They they, of course, have been doing for grain. And it's so important. Farmers need that support. This is not a sunflower. Sunflower is not only hardly as regulated as the Hemp crop here on the heels of hysteria and prohibition, but it's a complicated crop now. It's not rocket science, but there are tons of complexities here. And you're either going to set yourself up for success or you're not randomly buying seeds from unscrupulous seed sellers and randomly planting and not understanding. You're not setting yourself up for success. So partnering even just as a supplier, a strategic partnership, as it were, by utilizing cult of viruses services, is helping you to be set up for success. And that brings me to my my larger issue here. And that issue with question, I should say, is Cultivars is focusing right now on extract varieties. Am I correct or are you also sauntering in to oil, seed and fiber at this time?
Josh Schneider: [00:32:12] Oil, student fiber are something that's on our on our radar. And you're working with a couple of different companies that are doing some really interesting tri cropping. And in my opinion, that is the future of everything besides smokeable flower, but it's just not there yet.
Josh Schneider: [00:32:29] And so most of my work in Africa will focus on it'll probably be 80 percent food and fiber Hemp and 20 percent Rozin Hemp. Because I, I just don't see the economics working out for vegetative propagation. But since that's what that's what my my expertize and my team's expertize is.
Josh Schneider: [00:32:54] And like for instance, my head grower, Minerva, I started my career with her at proven winners and she produced she produced 50 million young plants, rooted tissue culture, grown mother stock, 15 million rooted young plants every year for 20 years. I threw 50 to 75 new varieties, sometimes in genera that nobody had ever even heard of her. And she hit them out of the park every time. And so our production team is incredibly talented, vegetative propagation. We also have we're working with some supplements, companies, like I mentioned, to help them scale up the production of, for instance, a new variety of turmeric that has a higher Cukierman level that one company has developed. So I can use tissue culture to scale up a clone of a variety.
Josh Schneider: [00:33:57] And the reason I harp on that clone's thing is because if I have, say, Girl Scout cookies, I have that variety of Cannabis and I put it into tissue culture. The first American that I take will be clone one, the second clone to the third clone three and so on. And we would trace that clone all the way to the finished product because sometimes there are slight. Variation. Even though they are technically clones of the same plant, one clone might grow a little bit differently than the other. Or one clone might be prone to mutations where while the other is more stable. And so we take we clone these these supplement plants that are meant for supplement vitamins and supplements. And then we are. Program is that I place these varieties with some of my women's farm cooperatives in Africa. And so they will be growing the turmeric and they get a contract. They want they want contracts more than they want handouts. And so they want to contract. These are sharp business women who have a group of women that are working together. So they will grow the biomass. The supplement companies get all this great marketing. And my ladies in Africa get a recurring, consistent business. And I can send them new tissue culture plants every year to make sure that there are no disease issues. So that's our approach with Cannabis right now to make sure that we can help the both sides of the Cannabis industry really understand what viruses do and how damaging they can be.
Josh Schneider: [00:35:40] That's what stunt is when you hear about people in the THC side talking about how much stunting or dudding. It's happening. And that's the dirty little secret on the THC side of California, Cannabis. A whole bunch of. Varieties were infected. And again, it's like Cobra. You can't see it until it's too late. And so this has caused so many production problems because when the Viceroy, especially the top Layton, then hops don't Viceroys and a Byroade is an even smaller piece of a virus. That's almost impossible to get rid of. But what happens is the plant doesn't produce any cannabinoids. And the flower production is is reduced by 70 or 80 percent. And so you have these groves that are doing five and ten thousand plants or more. And this virus, because they've not started with clean stock. And they spread it through their tool, through their hands, through insects. As an insect jumps from one plant to the next, they can carry the virus on their feet or their mouth parts. And so this is a catastrophic loss that has caused these companies who they were planning to get six or seven ounces per plant. And they got one down and it didn't have any THC or CBD in it. So I believe that we can help the industry develop the clean stock protocols that are necessary for us to be successful, whatever form or growing the crop.
Joy Beckerman: [00:37:16] It's it's just key that folks really understand the whole cycle. And as we often say, you know, back in the 90s and late 80s, shooting from the roof tops, it grows anywhere.
Joy Beckerman: [00:37:29] It's a miracle plant doesn't take water, doesn't take them out, et cetera, et cetera.
Joy Beckerman: [00:37:37] And we're doing research on all of these things, of course, as the plant reestablish itself in this huge country and all of our different climates and soil types and agricultural schemes. We're discovering all kinds of things that make those protestations that we shouted from the rooftops untrue. And so it's just very important to go into it with eyes wide open, getting that research done. We want farmers to be successful. We want farmers to reap the opportunities and the promise that this amazing crop has to bring. And there's only one way to do that, and that's to do it carefully, deliberately, and not while we're chasing unicorns of one hundred thousand and ten million dollars an acre. It's just not if it sounds too good to be true. Guys, it usually is an Hemp and an Cannabis and all of its forms are no exception. I love that even some of the most critical thinkers in the world. All of the sudden put on their magical thinking hat. When we discuss Hemp or Cannabis. And so, as I often say, please, as much as I'd love your magical hat and we can get as spiritual as you want. It's really important you keep your critical thinking head on key. It's key, man.
Joy Beckerman: [00:38:54] Everyone who wants to find called the virus, of course. Please go to our website, MJBulls and get all of the links that we can connect you with us to Josh Knight.
Joy Beckerman: [00:39:07] Before we end our interview here. Is there a message or anything in particular you want to make sure you get across to the listeners before we head off?
Josh Schneider: [00:39:16] Well, I think, Joy, the key is to ask a question. When you're buying plants, don't be afraid to ask a firm hard question. Where did your plants come from? How long have you had them? Have you done virus testing? What were the results? I think that one of the things that I think were desperately lacking is objective information. And so if people go to my website for Cultivar, it's Hemp. They will see on the blog and the resource side lots and lots of good information to help educate themselves rather than getting stuck in a morass of bro science and opinion on Instagram. Work hard to learn more about the crop before you get started. And as much as I would like to sell lots more young plants from my stock, I generally talk people down with their starting with five acres. I push in to just do an acre. Start small and get it right. And then you can expand and find a partner that you can work with. Like there's plenty of good companies out there. But Cultivar is Hemp we try and position ourselves as a resource for our customers all the way around. We're gonna be hopefully doing field trials across the country this year where we'll have some open days in the autumn before harvest, where people can come and look at all 30 of our varieties in the field up against other varieties and see what. Looks good and what they're interested in and learn more about the characteristics of the crop. So our goal is to constantly be out working to improve the process and the success of the farmer, that the farmer has to be open to asking questions and pushing to get answers.
Joy Beckerman: [00:41:14] Absolutely. And I'm looking right now. I mean, amazing resources that you folks have at cultivars have clean stock. A beginner's guide. Top seven questions to ask before you buy Hemp genetics. I mean, talk about a public service announcement of a Web site. What great tools. Such a contribution, Josh. I'm going to be excited to have you on the on Hemp Barons again. Can't thank you enough for all that you're doing to be an exemplary steward of this amazing crop. We are indeed so lucky to have you. I'm wishing you and yours good health during this transformative time in a really successful 2020, despite every challenge we see in front of us. Brother, May, May. All of that success and fulfillment come to you for being so dedicated to this crop.
Josh Schneider: [00:42:02] Thank you so much, joy. That is such kindness that you have spoken. And I so appreciate that. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this is going to take us.
Joy Beckerman: [00:42:12] Oh, and it's going to take us right into the sunshine. So especially with folks like you on board. Thank you so much again, Josh.
Josh Schneider: [00:42:19] Can't wait to have you back. Thanks so much, Joy.
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