Everything You Need to Know About Regenerative Cannabis Farming

Jessica Castillo for Ember

Between buying organic at the grocery store and seeking out seasonal produce at a farmer’s market, there are plenty of ways to source your food with the environment in mind. And with the climate crisis worsening every year, it can feel more and more important to prioritize food that helps, rather than hurts the environment. The same can be said for your cannabis.

While cannabis itself can’t yet be certified organic by the USDA—blame the plant’s status as a schedule-1 drug at the federal level for that—there are plenty of farmers who go the extra mile when it comes to what they grow. That includes what’s known as regenerative farming, a practice that centers the natural environment and dates back thousands of years to Indigenous communities.

“Some people call it biomimicry, but it's looking at a forest or a natural patch of land and recognizing the fact that this may have been tended land for a long time, but this isn't farmed land or agriculture, this is nature,” said Tina Gordon, a regenerative cannabis cultivator and founder/owner of Moon Made Farms in Humboldt County, California. “Regenerative farming is about learning from nature, observing nature closely, and incorporating practices that could resemble nature's own processes in the human-guided garden.”

Gordon’s path toward regenerative farming happened, well, naturally: She picked up books like The One Straw Revolution and Gaia's Garden, and learned from friends about processes like lunar farming and growing cannabis outside in the open air. The result is regeneratively farmed, sun-grown cannabis that smells, tastes, and feels like a reflection of the water, air, soil, and biodiversity that contributed to it. And according to Gordon, this flower is a far cry from industrially grown cannabis, which relies on artificial and forced conditions to grow. Sun-grown cannabis happens to be designated lower prices than industrially grown, indoor cannabis, too, given that regenerative farmers invest in the land for the long haul.

“What folks are getting is farm-to-table quality for the fast food price,” she said.

What does regenerative farming mean?

The first thing that comes to your mind when someone mentions farming—including fields, soil, and plants growing slowly over time—isn’t far off the mark. But in a world where industrial farming dominates everything from vegetables to eggs to livestock, that formerly natural process is increasingly rare.

“There’s no strict rule book,” the National Resources Defense Council, an ecological nonprofit, notes, “but the holistic principles behind the dynamic system of regenerative agriculture are meant to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity, and leave our land, waters, and climate in better shape for future generations.”

Or as Gordon said, “What regenerative farming is about on the most basic level is contributing more than you take.”

At Moon Made Farms, that looks like working with the plants that are native to the area—in their case, oak trees. Gordon explained that workers at Moon Made use oak chips, leaves, and other native tree byproducts, as well as wind, collected rainwater from a "living system"—as opposed to municipal, chemically treated water—to encourage the growth of their cannabis. "We are 2200 feet in altitude and 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean," said Gordon of the farm's coastal Humboldt location in the Emerald Triangle, a region in California known for its superior cannabis products. They also use the lunar cycle to inform when they sow seeds and how they let plants root down, and rely on natural sun cycles, including dawn and dusk, to feed their plants. Above all else, they listen to the soil they plant:  "We want to feed the land and the environment."

“The focus is on growing soil year after year after year,” said Gordon. “This includes no-till practices. This includes using living mulch. This includes layering that mulch year after year, using wood chips, using grasses, using everything that the land has to offer. So much of it has to do with a mindset of using what not only is accessible, but what the land offers where you are.”

How does regenerative farming impact the environment?

Not only does regenerative farming protect the ecosystem around it, but it has the opportunity to heal land that has been previously ravaged by past ecologically damaging farming practices.

The impacts of industrial farming are many—and according to the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation, that includes: soil, water, and air pollution; faster erosion of the soil; unsustainable water consumption; lack of nutritional value in industrially farmed foods. Industrial farming has also been linked to chronic diseases and foodborne pathogens due to pesticides and animal-based animal feed, as has the pollution that seeps into areas surrounding industrial farms. 

Regenerative farms, by contrast, focus on crop rotation, using cover crops and animals to protect plants and feed soil, and protecting the topsoil and other naturally occurring biological elements. Gordon also said something clicked for her when she first began really questioning the store-bought products she had previously been using. Now, Moon Made Farms prioritizes natural materials that already exist in abundance.

“I've got five golden rules on the farm, and number one is: Living things come first,” stressed Gordon. “What is the purpose here? What is the criteria? How do we do things? Why are we doing this? I'm really excited for this plant to start reaching people in such a way that it benefits them and where they can do things that then benefit their communities.”

How does sunlight impact cannabis?

Gordon’s commitment to regenerative farming with "full-spectrum sunlight" goes hand-in-hand with sungrown farming. And that pays off in the quality of Moon Made Farms’ flower. In fact, sun-grown cannabis is often sturdier and more nutrient-rich than plants that relied on grow lights and artificial supports for the totality of their lives.

A recent study conducted by a researcher at Columbia University compared the levels of cannabinoids and terpenes in sun-grown and indoor-grown cannabis. The latter featured cannabinoids that were more oxidized and degraded than their sun-grown counterparts, and the terpene profiles were also different. The study suggested that sun-grown cannabis could have more medical benefits than indoor-grown cannabis.

“It’s just like if you buy a cucumber that's been grown in a greenhouse versus one that's planted out in the sun and grows out in the sun,” said Christine Skibola, a former professor and researcher and the co-founder of the cannabis brand Cosmic View. “You're going to taste a difference. It's no different with cannabis, but for so long there have been all these falsehoods about how great indoor is and how inferior outdoor is.”

For her part, Gordon can tell the difference between sun-grown and indoor-grown cannabis by simply looking at it.

“Long ago, I would smoke a joint and not know what I was smoking,” she said. “Sometimes I felt great, sometimes I felt terrible. Now that I know and have an intimate relationship with this plant, I know that I was probably smoking something that doesn't agree with my body, and that was likely chemically grown indoors.”

How does regenerative farming impact the price of cannabis?

While you might be used to shelling out more money for organic apples at the grocery store, the opposite is true for sun-grown, regeneratively-farmed cannabis, Gordon said. The product ends up not only being more terpene- and cannabinoid-filled, but cheaper in the long run.

The folks at Moon Made Farms and other regenerative farms work a lot—they have to, on land that is as alive as they are. But they work with the environment as opposed to creating artificial environments. That, Gordon said, creates better cannabis all around. 

Given how cannabis has been shrouded in secrecy and blocked by prohibition for so many years, people haven’t been able to talk about the different farming practices the way you might talk about eggs that come from chickens in different living conditions.

“What is not known about cannabis right now is how it has grown, why it has grown that way, and what people are getting, because we haven't done the research,” Gordon said. “This is all coming out of prohibition which precluded us from getting the information that we need for consumers to make informed decisions.”

How does regenerative farming impact your cannabis experience?

For starters, Skibola said regenerative farming creates a much more reliable product overall. That’s why she and her daughter Nicole Skibola use sun-grown and regeneratively-farmed cannabis like Moon Made Farms’ flower to make their tinctures, balms, and edibles. 

“It's really important for us to maintain the strains because people need to have consistent effects,” she said. “If they buy our sleep product and we keep changing the strain, we don't know how that'll affect the overall outcome. We always use our Extreme OG strain and we always work with the same farmer to get it. We don't shop around and look for a cheap price. We go back to the same farmer.”

This not only helps keep farmers in business so they can focus on growing their plants rather than try to find new buyers, but it retains the cannabinoid and terpene profiles in the plants.

“We don't throw away valuable phytonutrients that are in the plant,” said Skibola. "That creates a full-spectrum product. Some of them, we know what they do, some of them we don't. We just maintain as much of the plant integrity as possible to get the best product.”

When Gordon talks to people who use Moon Made Farms cannabis, they often tell her it helps with their creativity and social lives, as well as everyday tasks like exercise, problem-solving, and working through social anxiety. 

“It's different for everybody, but it tends to help people find balance within themselves,” said Gordon. “This is the intelligence that cannabis has. Every one of us will have a different relationship.”

How can you find regeneratively-farmed cannabis? 

There are some certifications like Sun+Earth and Dragonfly Earth Medicine that regenerative and sun-grown farmers will seek out. (Moon Made Farms has both.) Regenerative farmers will more likely than not be transparent about their practices, and certifications support that. And brands that source from those farmers will also be clear about how and where they’re sourcing their cannabis.

“It’s about creating community and culture and a movement,” said Gordon, whose Moon Made Farms flower is used in strain-specific, single source products made by brands like Cosmic View and Drew Martin. “What I feel really strong about is true craft—not as a sales pitch but high-touch, independently owned and operated, and when everything is done with love and intention and in a very precious way.” Her partners vet her work and she assesses there. The result is a supply chain from grower to brand to consumer that is in it for the long haul.

Gordon recommends not only talking with the budtender at your local shop, but reaching out to the farmer directly if you can. “This is a kind of intimacy people deserve,” she said. “Look at certifications and ask questions at the dispensary, but also go straight to the source.”

Does this mean you should give up indoor-grown cannabis forever?

Not necessarily—and not only because it might be the only cannabis you have access to. 

“Some people are doing a good job with regenerative indoor—that's starting to be more of a conversation, as is living-soil indoor growing,” said Gordon. “I also understand why people grow indoors. Grow this plant however you can, given your access. But if you're a consumer and you have access to any flower grown any way, ask those questions about what you're putting in your body.”

Ultimately, she believes that just as regenerative farming was the past, it will be the future of cannabis as well. 

“If everyone who smoked a joint could visit an indoor grow and a regenerative farm, I think people would be absolutely shocked by their reactions,” Gordon said. “What they would see and feel at a regenerative sun-grown farm is something that's really familiar and really old. When people step into indoor-grows, it feels industrial.” 

And if the conversations Gordon is having with her consumers is any indication, the revolution is here to stay. Consumers are demanding more, and higher standards may change the industry forever.

“I'm starting to get a lot of questions about it and a lot of enthusiasm,” Gordon said of regenerative farming. “That tells me that the plant is doing her work.”

"Cannabis predates us by so long on the planet. People who are attracted to this plant are trying to get well in some way. Everything from palliative care to falling in love, to writing a poem—that’s the whole piece, that’s its resonance. The more this is better for one person, it’s better for so many."