Process Over Guesswork

Michael Towey is an experienced operations professional at Good Day Farm with a strong background in technology, agriculture, and innovation. He featured in the Agribusiness Review for his forward-thinking approach to integrating technology into cannabis agriculture, demonstrating leadership and inventive solutions in agribusiness.

In an exclusive interview with Agri Business Review, he shared invaluable insights on how Long-term success hinges on investing early in high-quality infrastructure to avoid crippling reinvestment costs later.

• Can you briefly describe your leadership role as Operator, Founder, Advisor? What are your key responsibilities and areas of focus?

o As a cultivator and operator, it is people and process. The term “Be process dependent, not people dependent” is said a lot in operations, and it is true. However, the cannabis industry is built on people who are often first timers. First timers in a cultivation facility, first time using technology, first time leading. I think it is my responsibility to educate and empower people to understand process intimately. Strong people execute and inform strong processes. These two things are cyclically linked, and the best teams value both together.

o As a founder and advisor, my focus is on actionability and expense management. It may be oversimplification, but new tools and offerings need to be built by teams and leaders who understand cost management, and customer value. Cannabis as an industry has a lot of what I call “surface scratchers” – companies and individuals who are interested in solving entry level issues, not root cause problems. This erodes operator confidence and encourages reliance on anecdotal decision making

• You’ve overseen over 2 million square feet of cultivation design. What’s one overlooked variable in facility design that has the biggest long-term operational impact?

o Infrastructure quality. From HVaC equipment, to how the floors and walls are built. Teams underestimate the operational expenses they will incur from underspending on the initial capital investment. We are starting to see facilities reach equipment maturation ages with things like HvaC and lighting. Are businesses prepared to reinvest the millions of dollars required to stay consistent? Ageing equipment can also be a culture killer, affecting team morale and trust. Many companies had initial visions of raising and exiting quickly, but now there is a transition to businesses becoming evergreen. Focus on quality infrastructure early is becoming a differentiator in successful operators.

• The cannabis industry is known for rapid scaling and regulatory flux. How do you approach production planning when legislative timelines often outpace operational readiness?

o Data management, flexibility, and non-ego-based decision making. I think everyone who has worked in the cannabis industry hates the word pivot, hah! Joking aside, flexibility is key. Combining this with empirical data review, modeling, and fact-based decision making is critical. I believe production planning is largely based on operational confidence and excellence. Teams need to be experts in their business, how it fits into the supply chain, and how to plan from an expense and revenue perspective. Teams who can understand serviceable market, their unique skill sets, and how those things fit together can usually find success.

• What innovations or techniques in cannabis cultivation are you currently experimenting with and what potential do you see in them for commercial scalability?

o We are currently focused on recipe standardization and refinement. With the right data collection, and building management systems, we are pushing to create unique recipes and performance settings that utilize and harness naturally occurring variables in CEA. Our goal is to be able to express genetic performance differences in the plants' yield and potency, while managing somaclonal variations.

• Given the differences in climate and infrastructure across your regions, how do you localize growing practices without compromising brand-wide product consistency?

o Data collection, set point manipulation, and operational alignment. CEA, regardless of cannabis is about variable management. There are many ways to do this, but sealed environments are generally best. Cultivation environments that are entirely indoor and that use artificial light are generally the most consistent. The focus is on unifying the infrastructure, the genetics, the controls, the systems, and set points across all sites to eliminate variables. With that, there is a diverse amount of data to be collected and analyzed on a regular basis to make sure the plant is growing the way we intend. Things like PPFD, Leaf Temps, Co2, water pH, EC, and media temps. By being connected to how the different systems react to the different planting events, subtle adjustments can be made to eliminate variances in yield, total active cannabinoids, and terpene content.

• What’s one piece of advice you’d give to cultivation or production leaders who are trying to scale without burning out their people or their product quality?

o Focus on your people, especially middle and entry level. This is the front line of your business. If they don’t show up, production doesn’t happen, stores don’t open, and sales don’t happen. It is easy to overvalue C-suite positions and other senior level leadership and lose track of the high cost of rehiring and training. In my opinion, people are looking for education and empowerment and focusing on this as leaders should be seen as reinvestment.