SpeakEasy Cannabis founder Marc Geen oversees what could be the largest legal cannabis growing operation in Canada. And it might surprise you to know that much of it, 60 acres, is outside.
It is believed to be the largest outdoor grow in the country.
"I don't think anyone's done 60 acres in one spot before. And I don't think anyone has come off the acreages with as much per acre as were projecting here."
Along with that, SpeakEasy is expanding it's indoor production to 100,000 square feet. And he told KelownaNow he's confident he will sell every bit of it.
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"We are going to grow within our fish bowl," he said. Adding that some large producers have made the mistake of growing for the sake of growing.
"We don't want a massive amount of production that's going to happen and no-one to sell it to."
The whole operation is surrounded by barbed wire fencing and scores of security cameras.
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Row upon row of the plants growing at SpeakEasy are topped with massive buds with just just a scattering of leaves. You don't need to be an expert to see what looks like a generous crop.
Geen credits the climate and the right plant selection. "These beasts," he said with a grin. "They're producing."
Mark Geen comes from a family with deep roots in the orchard industry. They had dabbled in ginseng, but cannabis? At first, he worried about how they would react to the idea.
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"Its something I took to my parents," he said, "and I thought maybe it would be a hard sell."
He joked that they had somehow lived through the 1960s without having a single puff of marijuana.
But to his surprise, it was a thumbs up. "They were all over it," said Geen.
"It is just another form of agriculture when you get right down to it," he explained. "No other form of agriculture, that I know of has as much stigma or culture attached to it as cannabis, but it is, in essence, a plant growing outside."
The 60 acres of cannabis plants is not just a mind-blowing image, it also represents potential upheaval in the cannabis business, because Geen argues it means high quality with much lower costs than greenhouses can manage.
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"Once this business model catches on," he predicts, "There's no room in the market for greenhouse production and that's 80 percent of the production right now."
Over the next few weeks, Geen and SpeakEasy expect to harvest about 70,000 kilograms of cannabis.



