On March 8, International Working Women's Day, the feminist movements of Latin America are gearing up to commemorate a year of struggle and prepare for the battles to come. The feminist movement in the continent is vast and diverse and has been fighting against the structures of patriarchy and right-wing repression for decades. Some of the key issues the movements are dealing with are struggles for their economic rights especially in light of the pandemic, violence in a number of spheres including the feminicides and the fight for reproductive rights. Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch talks about the challenges before feminist movements in Latin America. Hi and welcome back to another episode of Dispatches from Latin America. Today we're going to talk about women and feminist movements in Latin America ahead of March 8, International Working Women's Day. What are the primary issues that women are mobilizing about? What are the primary issues affecting women in the region? And what are they doing to fight this? So first, employment. Latin America was one of the hardest hit regions by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was estimated that over 26 million people lost their jobs in one year in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. This is a report by the International Labor Organization. Many of these jobs were lost in the informal sector and women specifically in this context were some of the most impacted. Women lost their jobs at a higher rate than men during the pandemic. This has many factors that contribute to this. Of course, the fact that women had to take on the extra challenges of taking care of the home and taking care of their families during the lockdown. But the actual decrease in participation of women in the workforce during the first year of the pandemic was 10.4% compared to 7.4% of male decline in the workforce. This is really important to highlight because today it's about to be two years since the start of the pandemic. And many of those women have not been able to recover their jobs and are still out of work and facing the economic challenges of losing their economic stability, losing their ability to provide for themselves and their family. And so this once again is a very, very central demand for women's movements, for feminist movements that see the economic challenges faced by working class women as intrinsically tied to the feminist movement. And this is going to be a very strong demand of movements across the continent who are really facing the challenges of this pandemic induced economic crisis, the political crisis, but is really being felt by the working class in many of these countries and especially by women. Another very important aspect which continues to bring women onto the streets throughout the year and of course is going to be a central point of struggle in this March 8th is of course the scourge of violence against women. Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the regions which faces the highest levels of femicides, which is the crime of killing a woman on the basis that she is a woman. There's many different estimates of the numbers of women who are murdered, oftentimes by their partners, people they know or strangers. There is a number that's very hard to track due to how these crimes take place. In 2019 it was estimated that across the region, 5,432 femicides were committed, 5,432 women were murdered for being women. In 2020, this number, according to Mundo Sur, this number was 4,580. 2021, the number apparently dropped to 2,000 and in this year there's already been over 100 femicides. Some of the most impacted countries are Mexico, Brazil, a lot of and also in Argentina. It's very important to consider though that these numbers are very underestimates of the actual number. Many of these crimes, as I mentioned, go unreported. There's not reliable information and access to the numbers, but it continues to be one of the crimes that really is mobilizing women. They're demanding an end to femicides, demanding safety, demanding an end to violence and men to gender-based violence, and also for their governments to take action to protect them, to ensure their safety, and to take action against those who commit these crimes. In many cases, in countries such as Honduras, very, very, very few cases are reported and when they are reported, there's an even lower number of cases that actually end in a conviction of the person who committed the crime. This March 8th, another key rallying point for women's movements, for feminist movements, is going to be demanding end to femicides, greater protection from governments, and an end to the misogynist violence that kills women every day. The feminist movement in Latin America is one of the strongest across the world, and this is also tied to the movements that have emerged against femicides. The Neuna Menos movement, Not One Less, which emerged after the brutal murder of Chiara Baez in Argentina in 2015, has become a global movement at this point. There's Neuna Menos in countries across the world, and it really speaks to the importance of this struggle and the determination of women to really put an end to this. Femicides will be another key issue that people are mobilizing on, and the final one is the access to the fundamental right of abortion. Latin American Caribbean, again, is one of the regions that has extremely strict legislation on this fundamental right. There are several countries in the region where abortion is not only inaccessible, but is also criminalized. And so there are women who are in prison for attempting to get abortions, for having miscarriages, or for having an abortion. There are a handful of countries such as now Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico, and Cuba, as well as Uruguay that have passed legislation to open up this right of abortion. In other countries, abortion is accessible, but only in very, very specific cases. For example, if the health of the mothers is at risk, if the health of the fetus is at risk, or if the pregnancy resulted from sexual violence or rape. And so in this sense, for many feminist movements, it has become a very important rallying cry to demand abortion access, because when it is only available in these very specific conditions, this of course bars the right to many working-class women across the world. And then there are also several countries in the region that have completely criminalized abortion. And so this is really a cause that unites feminist movements across the continent, from as far north as Mexico to as far south as Argentina, continues to be a very, very important rallying cry. And so I think this March 8th, we're going to see, despite the pandemic conditions, I think people are once again going to raise these demands of an end to violence against women, no more feminicides. It continues to be such a existential threat to the survival and to the dignity of women in countries across the region. Demanding employment as women have been some of the most impacted by the economic crisis in during the pandemic, and demanding the expansion of access to abortion rights in countries across the region, this is not a moral issue. It is a public health issue, as that is the slogan for many of these movements. And so this is going, this is kind of the perspective with which we're looking at March 8th, International Working Women's Day in the region. I'm sure that we'll be covering these mobilizations. The landless rural workers movement are calling for national mobilization, calling for land, work, the right to exist. And these are very important slogans at a time where the far right in the region is continually growing. There are progressive advances, of course, but women are still at the crux of this far right advance and the economic crisis that's being faced by the in the region. So we'll be sure to come back to you with reports on what happened on March 8th, the mobilizations, and all of that and more. Thanks for watching People's Dispatch.


I don't know what's happening there. So I guess to get started, we put together a presentation here while we wait for Siband to get here. I'm going to start sharing my screen. But today, unlike last call, where we kind of dominated the conversation, talking about the model Andrew was presenting at this conversation should be a bit more of a dialogue. Our topic today is going to be cultivation. My license isn't hearing, and we've kind of broken it into a few different topics that I think we want to discuss. So give me a second while I share my screen and see if Siband is able to join. So let's wait one sec. I think the right person needs to click on the admit button. Oh, for some reason that's me. It says I'm admitting Siband. So is Siband you in here yet? I am. I'm not sure what happened. I've been sitting in the waiting room since 10 minutes ago. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I tried to hit admit a couple of times and it didn't seem to let you in. So I don't know. Tough bouncers here. All right. Can you guys see this in the presentation yet or no? Yes, we can. All right. Beautiful. So here's the I'll just start moving through quickly. Here's the agenda, which we already have already seen. And as I mentioned, we're going to talk about three different topics. They're going to be the estimated total canopy needed for the market cultivation hearing in particular how we want to handle outdoor cultivation. And then kind of follow up on a point that Siband raised last time. Just talk a little bit about entrepreneurial demand, entrepreneurial demand and kind of a system to try to deal with that and figure out a way to figure out who's going to apply. And then we reserve some time at the end to cover public comments. So before we jump into it, just a couple of housekeeping things. We talked about it a little bit on the last call, but I wanted to present kind of our thinking for the next handful of meetings as we prepare for this October 1 report deadline. So we kind of broke up the next few meetings by topic. This meeting, as we mentioned, is cultivation Thursday's meeting. I think we'd like to talk about other license types. There are retail, manufacturing, wholesale license types, and then other license types that may be up for discussion. A week from today, we'd like to talk about local issues, particular local fees, the local process, and then also have some discussion at the end of that of putting some numbers on paper for the state fees. So we'll talk a little bit about the CCD's projected budget and some of the requirements there. And then our goal would be to have kind of an outline of some of the fee recommendations that we need for that October 1 report to present on that Thursday, September 23 meeting. So that meeting, we're kind of not getting topics where we just kind of have what we have distilled from these meetings, put it on the paper, and we can kind of run through them and discuss it. There's actually time for one more meeting before we kind of need to grab up that report. But right now, I figured we'd hold that for any kind of topics that need immediate discussion, or we kind of run out of time on any of these other topics because this is a very condensed time, obviously. And then also kind of save that meeting for review of the final discussions before they really find recommendations before they go into the report from the board to the legislature. So hope that makes sense. If not, or if you have any comments or questions, feel free to email me or bring them up as we're kind of talking about these different topics. And then the last thing before we jump into our presentation here, I just wanted to add a couple of slides on the statutory provisions. All of these are in those reference materials that I think Tom sent to last week, but just wanted to highlight the ones that are relevant for today. Problems. We've had a jam-packed agenda, so I won't go through all of it, but here's the kind of the language for the 10-1 report that we need to address just on which fees we need to cover, what license fees and types we need to cover along those lines. Dan, this is James Pepper. We're not seeing any changes to the slides. We just see the kind of cover page via strategies. Our other... Oh, yeah, sorry, I thought I was flipping through. Give me one second. Okay. Now do you see it? No. No, now. No, it's still through. I think you have to do it on the actual teams. So are you guys seeing it flip now? No. Nope. In the down. I see a black screen. Let me try to reload it. If you send it to me, I'm happy to flip through on your behalf. Now do we have to put it? Still no. Oh, there we go. We got it now. All right. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. Yeah, sorry about that. I was seeing a flip online, which was not helpful to everyone else. So here's the topics. Here's the 10-1 report language. I think everyone's seen that before. What I did here is I just pulled out a couple of things that will affect this subgroup today, just that we have to address reducing or eliminating license fees for individuals from communities that historically was unfortunately impacted by cannabis prohibition or directly personally impacted by cannabis prohibition. I know there's another subgroup that's working on those definitions and how to integrate those, but as we come up with license fee recommendations, we're going to have to address that there'll be lower fees for social equity applicants and those who are impacted by the law and drugs. There's also a statutory license fee of $50,000 for integrated licenses. That needs to be factored into what we think are reasonable fees because those businesses are going to be required to pay those anyways. And then lastly, there's a statutory requirement that we tier cultivation licenses and retail licenses. The board has discretion over tiering other license types. And then I just pulled out the only statutory tier that's created are these small cultivators. So here's the information from the statute on what those entail. You can see the definition at the top and then the various provisions kind of related to that. So don't probably have time to dive too fully into each aspect of that since we're already well behind due to my technical problems, but we will refer to those throughout the day, but now we'll jump into the discussion topic. So the first one is basically the conclusion to Andrew's presentation on last Thursday's meeting. So you all saw the model and you had a little bit of time to play around with it. But kind of the main purpose of creating that whole model was so that we could try to estimate what the supply and demand of cannabis in Vermont would be. So Andrew showed you kind of the assumptions made in that model, how that model works, but we didn't kind of hit, I think we hit the main point there towards the end. But as you play with it and you see demand and supply over time, there's kind of a range of flower and canopy that you need to have in order to make sure that you meet 100% of the demand, but don't create a vast surplus that will either cause prices to plummet or lead to incentives to ship some of that surplus into the illicit market or into other states. So I don't know, Andrew, if you want to jump in here, but kind of that sweet spot according to the model that we're looking at seems to be between 350,000 square feet to 400,000 square feet of flower and canopy. So Andrew, if you want to kind of take over here, that's fine, or I can run through it. I know you were the one who put together the model, so you might have another sense of how you want to explain that. Yeah, so I'm happy to explain this. So this is based on looking at medical and adult use demand as currently as well as the projections going forward. While the model is 350,000 to 400,000 square feet, that would be inclusive of both medical and adult use. Well, we don't have the entire numbers on the total amount of cultivation, or at least I don't from medical counters cultivators. Lindsay Wells, the agency may have that. I know we're discussing to try to obtain some more of that information. From my conversations with the existing operators, their total currently operational flowering canopy is not all that huge. I'd be very surprised if all of them together was any larger than 15,000 square feet of flowering canopy in utilization. So when we're looking at this, really trying to identify, okay, based upon the total amount of demand and how that demand comes in the form of flower and constraints and manufactured products, would obviously make some adjustments given the fact that for model have a relatively unique landscape as far as permitted products, permitted product forms, that of course will alter the demand profile. Assuming those different, those data points as well as the ramp up of market capture by the regulated market, Dan and I and a few others have played around with the model for quite a bit of time to try to look at specifically what points is, as the market is really serving far more than we essentially would likely need. And this isn't necessarily that okay, we're going to put a strict cap on that much square footage, but I think probably what makes the most sense is to license individuals, open the door on the licensing individuals with a small canopy size to start with and have individuals enter the market. And as, you know, like we were making the bouncer joke at the front, at some point you're thinking and looking around and you're asking, is the club reaching fire capacity? And sometimes you start slowing down the line or for a period of time, close, you know, not admit new people in until others have left. And there's some history of states like Oregon and some others doing that as a means of controlling, you know, oversupply. Another thing to note is that this model does take into consideration a few things, which I think are important for people and that is called to note. So not everyone is going to be growing at the amount of canopy that they say that they have, right? Let's say you have, and this is evident in Colorado, it's evident in Washington, and while we don't have the exact research on this, it seems to be evident in Massachusetts as well. Is that Colorado, you know, there's a certain amount of plant count that they have allocated to each of one of them. And depending on the month, you know, even, there is some seasonality to this, which still follows, is that not all of the cannabis is being utilized. So in those places, it depends, but it can be anywhere from like only 40 to 60% of your allocated canopy is actually utilized. I have to set forward some of that data from the Colorado report as well as from a Washington state canopy utilization report. So this model does have an adjustable assumption that says that only 65% of the allocated canopy is actually going to be utilized. So, you know, if let's say we're allocating 400,000 square feet of flowering canopy, and that's not total building facility, that's just flowering canopy. So usually total building is spout twice that, depending on what style of building you're building and how you're utilizing your canopy within that square footage. So that would really only assume that 65% of even that 400,000 would be utilized based upon what we're seeing in other states is kind of those norms. So at around 400,000 square feet, depending on what month you're in, you know, there's certain periods of time when you start getting to that, even on a rolling basis, taking into account the shelf life of products that you have inventory that's about 140 to 160% above what we estimate demand to be. And those decades to the point there where you start worrying a little bit about oversupply, particularly as you get into the 180 to 200% of, you know, of what really it seems so the market is demanding at that point. So that's kind of where we got to the 350 to 400,000 square feet of flowering canopy and we'll discuss a little bit later about how it pertains to indoor versus outdoor, kind of what is the right mix there because indoor and outdoor, from my perspective, ends up looking at, you know, seasonal harvest versus non-seasonal harvest. And I think that's an important way to look at it when it comes to the flow of supply as it intermixes with the flow of demand throughout a year. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I think our next topic is going to be or like in a second we'll start talking about tiering and outdoor, but I want to stop now and for questions because no one's had the chance to hit you with questions over the model or on anything else. Yeah, Stephanie, I see your hand raised. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question concerning there's a provision in Act 1. No, it's actually in Act 65, whatever, the one that just passed. Looking at the cultivation of hemp and the extraction of CBD to create THC and whether or not that has been factored into this flowering canopy. And I don't, there's a larger policy discussion regarding whether or not the Cannabis Control Board is interested in venturing down that road, I guess, but that, I just was curious, I guess. Yeah, Stephanie, so you're talking about essentially hemp CBD isolate with biosynthesis turning hemp CBD isolate back into THC? Yes. Yeah, so while, you know, there's one question about like, is that factored into the model? The answer to that is no, this is not factored in. The other thing is that it probably works, particularly if you're talking about, you know, in the Vermont market, like Cannabis is a really good plant at producing THC and I would imagine that it will be cheaper in Vermont to extract THC from Cannabis that's grown in the state and it would be to buy CBD isolate and through biosynthesis converted back into THC. Now, I might be wrong on that, but I don't see that as likely. Now, thanks to your help, you know, you and I corresponded a little bit a number of weeks ago, you did provide some great data on hemp harvest and things like that and I did look, because in Vermont, I think what we're likely to have is that business operators in order to comply with some of the requirements or THC potency in concentrated forums will essentially use other cannabinoids to balance that out and so your vape pens are all going to be one-to-one CBD to THC and I think what's likely there, Stephanie, is that people will buy hemp CBD from both within Vermont and across and from other places by legal hemp CBD and if it's permitted, utilize that as an input ingredients to essentially balance out the ratios in their concentrated products so that they meet statutory limitations. So the model does take into consideration some adjustable assumptions for how much hemp CBD may be needed as an input ingredient in the market in order to meet the statutory limitations of the concentrates that are produced. Does that make sense? I see there's a question. You might be on. I don't know if that's Chris or if that's... Yeah, that's Chris. Hey there, just trying to get some clarity. You semi-answered one of my questions already because as I'm looking at the 350 to 400,000 square feet, obviously, how much is indoor? How much is outdoor? Is it going to be a major factor in what your yearly output is going to be? I guess part two of that is have you guys done any calculations on what that much canopy will provide per year pound-wise? Absolutely, yeah. So the model is a little bit complex because you have both wet weight harvest as well as dry weight harvest, right? Yeah, so the model actually allows for some of the cannabis to be pulled as wet weight initially for the production of live resin and other things like that high-end concentrated forms. So it's a little bit different but if we're looking at... I'm just going to look at total wet flower yield here in total and then I'm going to assume that we have the 75% water loss to dry weight. I have the model currently set just to give you guys some clarity at essentially 320,000 square feet of indoor and 64,000 square feet of indoor. Just trying to get that 80-20. I'll give it to the end of results and I'll be able to tell you this in a second. Ram's not in... We can convert that easily. Oh, super easy. About 453.592. Right. So that seems to be... and we're just looking at flower and obviously trim produces another pretty significant quantity and I can tell you what that is as well. So it depends year to year as the model does contain that random number generator for how much is being produced but we're looking at roughly 55,000 pounds of flower and about 11,000 pounds of trim. So 55,000 fine finished flower. Yeah. And then now there are about 11,000... I'm looking at this right now for 2025 and again these numbers will change because of the way that the model incorporates the random... essentially the unknown of how long it takes over to go from final license to having their facility built out. So it's different a little bit but it's generally around 55,000 pounds, a little more than 55 to 56,000 pounds of dry flower assuming you have water loss of 75%. Yeah. And then about 11,000 pounds, a little more than that, a little more than 11,000 pounds of trim which would then go into concentrated products. Some of your flower will also go into concentrations as well for high end concentrations. So you're saying that you're calculating just trim for concentrates, no bud runs for concentrates? Yeah, the model does include some bud runs. So it's all adjustable assumptions. Right now I have it at... we can change this relatively easily. Right now the indoor I have it is 3% on the wet flower and 5% on dry flower goes to concentrates and then 8% of dry flower for outdoor goes to concentrates and then 100% of trim. So in both cases it's not quite 8% on both because the wet flower and dry flower obviously there's less dry flower where the wet flower is taken out but it's by large about 8%. And that when adjusting the model seemed to work about right. It's all a bit of educated guesswork to try to figure out, what is the bounds, the range? And this is why I don't think that if I said we should produce exactly 375,000 square feet. I don't think a hard festival makes sense here. Honestly there's a lot of assumptions. I personally think for consumer sales reasons it's better to have slight overages than it is to have slight shortages. So we're really looking at what in the market even when considering that not everyone is going to grow their capacity that we aren't getting to like producing twice as much as we need. Have you also calculated you're giving me the ratios of indoor to outdoor but what about the different size canopies for different tiers of growing? Have you guys done any split models on that? So that is it in the model itself. I think as it pertain there there's a question of do you have different yield efficiencies at different sizes? There's not really enough research to show that at this point, at least I haven't seen that. This model estimates about 40 grams of square foot per flowering canopy per harvest and 30 grams of flowering canopy per harvest for outdoor which lines up both with what I got from the medical operators what I worked on with facilities around the country and from my conversations with outdoor growers in other places around the country and legal outdoor growers. As far as how we split it out I think this is a question that blends into a bit of what Dan had noted later on which in today's discussion Why don't we just jump over there? It's all kind of the same we're just trying to break it out into it's all part of the same discussion so our next slide is just going to be starting from that overall canopy we need to start figuring out how to divide it up by tier and then obviously Vermont would like to promote outdoor cultivation so we started to run through that so Andrew you can continue, sorry to interrupt but we can jump into this conversation now Thanks Dan, that's perfect sorry guys I'm not on video my bandwidth at my house is not great video just means that there's a much higher likelihood that my feed's going to cut out as James and Bren thankfully dealt with me on last week so here's what I personally think might make a lot of sense but I want to hear what other people have and there's two good models of different states for tiering and I think there's a handful of other states as well but for all intents and purposes because between Dan and I and Jim we know these two states like the back of our hand we can look at Massachusetts and Colorado both of them have tier structures I think Colorado is weird because it does plants first what makes a lot more sense in Massachusetts is square feet now the question is first of all do we want the tier to be based on square feet of cultivation or do we want the tier to be specific on square feet of flowering canopy I think the square feet of flowering canopy gives us a little bit more specificity on exactly how much it's being outputted but could be a little bit more arduous both from a evaluation perspective and from just a flexibility of a cultivator that like maybe they want to do a lot more vaging at a certain time more at certain times they're going to have less vaging and more flowering so I think that there's good reasons to go with what Mass did and do the total cultivation in that case we'll just have to make some estimates of what is 400,000 square feet of flowering as it pertains to all total cultivation probably somewhere around 6 to 700,000 square feet but to get into the larger question of tiers I think the two big distinctions between Massachusetts and Colorado at least in the current environment is that in Massachusetts you can apply for any of the tier canopy is that go from what I think it's worth 5,000 square feet of the lowest around there to about 100,000 square feet so you can apply for and say I'm going to start out at 60,000 square feet or I'm going to start out at no more than 30,000 square feet whereas in Colorado you start out at the lowest tier and you have to build your way up I think a hybrid approach this probably makes the most sense so we'll potentially have two different structures for indoor and outdoor and by outdoor I mean seasonal harvest so you might have some little bit of light deprivation, greenhouse stuff particularly for your seedlings your clones and your vegetative plants but on outdoor you'd really just be doing straight outdoor or hoop houses and you'd be harvesting in Vermont only once a year because it's Vermont and the season is pretty short and so maybe you have a handful of different tiers let's say for instance we have five tiers for outdoor 500 square feet of flowering 1,000 square feet of flowering 1,500 square feet of flowering and then 3,000 and 5,000 but maybe you could start in any one of the first three bottom tiers you could say I'm going to choose 500 or I'm going to choose 1,500 but if you wanted to grow 5,000 you'd actually have to jump the tier you'd have to start at the highest tier you can enter in and you'd have to graduate maybe that's also the case for indoor as well maybe the highest tier if you're really getting large is 30, 40, 50,000 square feet but you'd only be able to start at the highest tier there'd be different entry tiers whether it's 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 or even maybe 10,000 but maybe you couldn't start at any more than 10,000 square feet of flowering canopy and you'd have to graduate so there's a little bit of flexibility from what size grow you want to start at but then growth within those tiers and there are larger and larger tiers up to a point that Vermont feels comfortable but that you couldn't necessarily enter in at the largest tier so those are just some of the things that Dan and I and Jen were talking about previously and I'd love to hear thoughts from other people on the meeting Thanks Andrew, so yeah as you mentioned these are kind of in principle that was kind of how we thought might make sense like the different tiers starting at obviously quite a smaller number than some of the larger states since the overall canopy is going to be lower but we want to hear from the does any of the members of the subcommittee have any thoughts on kind of the principle not necessarily what those tiers are but just the principle of different tiers and then moving between them if you can show the man or you can graduate up and then maybe building in some larger tiers for later down the road if in case the market continues to develop or businesses continue to develop I like the idea it sounds reasonable to me starting small proving success getting larger and both indoor and outdoor cultivation I agree with your definitions of what is indoor and outdoor it's how we apply it and that have programs that works for me and yeah no the principle works I'd be interested in hearing from others on the subcommittee Chris or Siobhan do you either of you guys have thoughts on the principle at least or any questions or kind of what we're thinking Yeah I don't have anything to add I would say I think you've said so far seems to make sense I just keep coming back to how you're going to split this up because if a lot of this 400,000 square feet is smaller smaller square footage grows like I'm wrapping my head around how you can get to regulate this it's just a lot of square footage to regulate Yeah there's obviously a lot of moving parts here you can go Andrew Yeah I was going to say that that's a big question that I think gets into the question some of the additional thoughts on how do we gauge entrepreneurial demand and by that I mean like demand to be a cannabis grower in Vermont right you know we were looking at as I mentioned at the last meeting you know it's like what state do I maybe try to compare Vermont to and it's the other it's the other cold isolated rural state which is Alaska which because it's a state that similarly has a very residentially focused you know trying to get the entrepreneurs who live in the state they've got pretty strong presence of requirements out there it's also relatively small market I think there's you know only about three quarters of a million people in Alaska and so Dan and I and Jen were doing some evaluations and Dan I'm not sure if you have a more precise number on this but I think it was about 150 or so growers in Alaska there's a little bit of complications because they have two different license types so then the question is you know how many growers is there naturally going to be in applying in Vermont and if we had let's say we had you know 100 100 growers you know it's a lot to regulate in a small state but if their average canopy size was about 3,000 to 4,000 square feet of flowering canopy that would be exactly perfect and so I think part of the desire is to welcome as many of these small growers as possible which you know it's perfect because if we're trying to welcome as many small growers as possible but we also don't have a giant market size then all those small growers are just going to need to stay small and maybe over time as eventually in federal legalization happens things like that hopefully some of these small growers get larger when they're able to export to Massachusetts or New York or wherever else but for the time purposes we really have to look at what that average is going to be and this also gets into the question of how can we gauge the intent to cultivate how do we know if we have 100,000 growers I'm sorry if we have 100 growers how many of them want to grow between 1,000 to 3,000 square feet of flowering canopy and how many of them want to grow 5 to 10,000 square feet of canopy and how do we prioritize that as it comes to who gets let through the door we know that there's a lot of ability as it pertains to determining who gets their application reviewed which ones get approved and how does that prioritize to be able to ensure that there is a good balance and a balance that matches the desires both of the state as well as the needs of the market as they get licensed Chris you keep anticipating our next slide so that's what Andrew is touching upon one of the things that we were going to talk about next maybe just this conversation now is back on the principles of things and we think could be important for Vermont to create some sort of application of intent or an early phase provisional licensure where those who are interested in applying can compile some of the necessary materials and apply for that initial piece without having everything lined up without maybe not having a property lined up or the local approval lined up but we kind of thought there's a handful of benefits that help that would help the state and help those operating within the state first one being one it's a little difficult to see or project right now what the demand for what the entrepreneurial demand is going to be in Vermont and that would give the board members a sense earlier in the process rather than waiting for the full application process to start second one is that it can be cheaper for those who are trying to operate in the state to be able to kind of get initial approval for some of these things about any of the required background shacks any of that sort of thing before they have to start paying rental facility or anything like that I'll defer to Andrew and Jen if they want to talk a little more of the benefits but that was one of the things that we were going to throw into you guys and see if there's any thoughts from the subcommittee we think some sort of process like that could be helpful you know we could have an iron up the details and those can probably wait until after the October 1 report but just creating some sort of process to have initial approval like before final approval kind of early in the process to gauge you know gauge demand gauge supply problems, gauge interest things along those lines Stephanie, I see you have a question or Stephanie with the question and I think Jen I was just I was just going to say that the provisional license could be helpful to the cannabis control board but also to growers in the market so long as they know that they can proceed to the next steps without I mean obviously they would have to demonstrate something, the details we don't know yet to to work towards something and I mean just a slower roll out like if we just release licenses and everybody just rushes then the folks who don't have an opportunity to get their ducks in line are going to be at a loss so I like the idea of a provisional step meeting certain standards that would then guarantee that individual a license at some point down the road or or even well maybe this might not work but a license post dated to being effective to assist with a roll out but I don't know that might not work entirely relative to what you're talking about but anyway I just I've heard some comments from folks so. So if I can just give like a brief perspective of what I saw as a regulator in Massachusetts when we were establishing the regs looking to help applicants trying to help small businesses and that's what we came up with the micro licenses, the craft cultivators the co-ops and the like is that one is going to be difficult to time it with the growing season if you're focusing on outdoor cultivation. If they don't get the seeds and I'm sure all of you know they don't get the seeds in the ground at a certain time then the whole season is lost and so that was a problem that we saw but the other thing too though is that as people start to decide whether they want to get into this or not because I can almost guarantee that some are waiting to find out what the process is before they choose to get involved with this it's helpful to have provisional licenses it's helpful to have those steps in place because one depending upon how well financed someone is they're not going to be able to get their financing right away that was a big problem for some of our applicants early on is that there's no banking services you're not going out to get a loan you're going to hit up your friends your family and everyone in between so when you talk about the cost of what it's going to take from them deciding to apply to what the control board is going to have as a process could be lengthy but it could be more costly I think that keep in mind one obviously the timing but secondly whatever process the board comes up with for their licensing process like we for instance had a provisional and then a final license there's some time in between some people said it took too long some people said it wasn't things to keep in the back of your mind and I heard that it's going to be a lot for the cannabis board to enforce you don't know how many people are going to apply at the time there could be a large amount of small properties that is going to need enforcement services which means you're going to have to have inspectors or enforcement officers you're going to have to make sure that things are in place and there's constant visits and things of that nature so there's a really big picture to remember as we're moving forward especially with the recommendations and what Andrew's recommendations are from his model you're going to want to make it public Siobhan? I caught out briefly so someone may have asked this question I don't think I heard it should we be expecting any sort of correlation between small growers and outdoor you know it strikes me as a very rural state we may have a lot of people who find lower barriers to entry and get into this by they're already farmers or they already have land or things like that and you know would that lead to any concerns we should have of just some of those people being overweight one type of growth? Yeah I mean I think that's a good point and a good question I think and we just started to think about you know the statute has once prioritization for outdoor growth and for small growers so some of these things start to fit and prioritizing different things so when you start to fit together where maybe you want to create a real easy low fee like a low fee license for small cultivators who are growing outside you know we haven't made recommendations or anything on that but those things start to fit together and then you might start looking at a thing where most of the outdoor cultivation are small farmers which has both benefits and I guess you could make an argument that there's some drawbacks too if there's some financing issues and get small farmers is going to hit the whole outdoor cultivation market more but there's some issues with kind of having size and you know cultivation location correlated but you know these are all things the subcommittee has any thoughts on how do you want we'll be talking about all this for the next couple weeks I guess one thing that's I guess related is we have thought a lot about outdoor cultivation the total canopy should be outdoors because there's some kind of Vermont specific issues that we've talked about a couple of them on this but first one being obviously it's a the cold weather leads to a short growing season it also means that your harvest is going to come and your biggest supply is going to come right at the time when according to Andrew's model demand is at its lowest and the demand will kind of hit its lowest point in that late October early December stretch just due to less tourism at that time of the year so there's some issues there and I guess one of the more important things to know and Andrew Andrew has a good metaphor for it but one of the issues with the potency limits and concentrates and how that will kind of keep the concentrate market limited in Vermont is that it makes it hard to kind of like preserve the harvest after it's done if you can't convert it if you can't extract it and turn it into concentrate so I think Andrew you can pop in with yours but he can't use analogy was about how apple orchards would look different if they weren't able to convert it into cider or preserve the products in other ways to make sales continue throughout the year so Andrew if you want to talk a little bit about the outdoor model unfortunately we're kind of running out of time because I know we have to reserve a few minutes at the end here public comment Andrew why don't you talk about outdoor for a second and we'll try to grab some public comment time 20% is not a hard and fast rule I did some adjustments particularly if we're looking at like the shelf life and the shelf life of kind of flower is more to 3 to 4 months for 2 to 3 months we might be able to have more like 30% without it really distorting things but what this would essentially result in and I think for people who are looking at this it's really a good example to look at what happened in Oregon which it is you know Oregon is a great market in a lot of ways and I absolutely love how they opened their arms and really encouraged individuals to come in or from the existing legacy market these small family farmers in Oregon that survived in certain places of the rural state by cultivating cannabis for generations they welcome them into the market but because Oregon only has a population of like 3 to 4 million people and they have a lot of really good cultivators they essentially ended on certain years I think it was like the after in the fall of 2017 with like 3 to 4 years worth of canopy cultivated of their demand and it just drove so many farmers out of business because of spiraling and things like that and I worry given the population size of Vermont something you know and the high quality of existing legacy market growers that something similar can happen now Oregon could have done a lot more you know ensuring that those small farms were those outdoor farms were small and there were some issues they didn't realize early on that we can learn from but when we're evaluating this right the question is that okay let's say you harvest a lot of cannabis flower in the end of September early October now it's perfect you know some of that will immediately go to you know tourists people that are taking advantage of the beautiful fall foliage but the ski season doesn't start until December and with the way global warming is happening I'm not sure if this is the same case as the ski season in Vermont as it is what I'm very used to in Colorado the typical ski season in Colorado was like January through March but because of global warming it's actually shifted and it's now like February to April so we could end up with a situation of this happening you know I know there's been some years of sad dry spells in Vermont as far as the ski season doesn't start until January February and in that sort of case you have all this good outdoor flower that's produced that there just isn't enough demand to heat up and if a lot of that is being produced and some of it ends up going bad or you know camping turns into concentrates to be essentially preserved because the concentration process does enable those cannabinoids to stick around for longer you know buy your summer time but things are coming back up again and cannabis cultivation cannabis consumption tends to be higher in June July people are outside hiking you end up with shortages and so that's where it's you know we want to be sure that we are welcoming with open arms small farmers you know farmers that you know best way to start a cannabis grow that doesn't require millions of dollars to have a small farm a hoop house outdoors and if we want to accept those people then we're going to want to welcome them in but we also don't want to drive them out of business because of they can't handle the seasonal fluctuations and so that's why you know striking that balance will allow them to exist in a market where you know hopefully they'll be able to store and figure out some good storage techniques so they can sell the flower the outdoor harvest that they they cropped out in October in March or April but if not we want to ensure that there's not so much on the market all at once and if they're expected prices they get just isn't the price that they're able to get in the market Dan we do have one person with public comment I know that we're working short on time sorry about that Stephanie has one question is it a quick one for Stephanie and then we'll jump to the public comment we can talk about it later but just to state it concentrate question is it possible to preserve via concentrating but then diluting when you make a product later on so I don't know I just was thinking that that issue isn't present so long as the product that meets the market is compliant with the concentration standards but maybe it's being interpreted a little different that's all we can talk about that later sorry for running so late but I guess let's open it up for public comment yeah this is Dave Silverman from Middlebury I'll keep it brief thank you all I'm very concerned about the risk that you are underestimating the demand the 55,000 pounds output here is roughly what RAND estimated in 2015 and that was a flower market back then there was not a lot of demand for value added products in that model and my worry is that if you capped production too low and prices then become artificially high we're going to lose one of the key benefits of Act 164 which was to bring the parallel illicit market into the regulated market if we keep prices high in the regulated market that creates room for that parallel market to continue we only get them into the regulated market by undercutting the parallel market and making it so that the risk premium is no longer there for them so I'm concerned about that I'm also concerned that if you put production caps on the rec market we'll end up with a situation where three or five medical dispensaries aren't subject to caps in their production under our statute and even if you try to change that statute in time because of the way our legislative cycle works and what we end up with is a very inequitable market where you have maybe out of your desired 400,000 square feet where you could have a third or half of it being produced by the medical incumbents I think that would be a very bad result that would suffer from a huge lack of political support in Vermont finally when I hear folks worried about how to visit all these farms and how to heavily regulate I just I want to remind you this is Vermont we already have lots and lots of growers who already have seeds in the ground we're not visiting their farms now at all whatever we do in this regulated market is more than we've been doing and is a net positive we're not going to be able to get to all of these farms there's going to be many, many of them I represent several would be growers in Addison County we're pretty small the thought that there will only be 100 or a couple of 100 small growers in Vermont who will drive with what I'm seeing out there so again just let's make sure that we're giving all of the existing growers the opportunity to be in this market recognizing that risk on the other side like what Oregon had with their price crash let's figure out how to manage that without driving people away from the regulated market anyone else anything for the public comment here in the room great and I know I just want to say that we have received public comment through the the web portal of the board set up and we're certainly taking into account if we have more time I started addressing some of those but maybe we'll do that at a future meeting but just anyone who has submitted comments there just want everyone to know that they're being read and considered into these discussions so I don't think I have anything else our next our next meeting of this some committee is on Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern I believe yeah Thursday afternoon 1 p.m. Eastern we're going to I think our agenda will be to talk about the other license types other than cultivation but obviously we ran out of time here today so feel free to bring up other cultivation related questions all of these topics are intertwined so we'll be a little frantic between now and October 1 make sure we get everything covered but that's our goal so thanks everyone for your time I don't know if I do I need to have a motion to adjourn for the day I guess is there anyone who will second that motion Stephanie or thank you for thank you for seconding so I think we're all done here it's hard for the technical difficulties at the beginning and I'll let it out to everyone soon thanks everyone