Cannacurio Podcast Episode 72 with Joseph Edwards of Yofumo Technologies

In this episode of the Cannacurio Podcast, Ed Keating chats with Joseph Edwards, Chief Science Officer at Yofumo. They discuss Joseph’s journey from biochemistry and engineering to pioneering cannabis decontamination and curing technologies. Learn how Yofumo’s ozone-based systems are helping operators meet microbial compliance standards, preserve product quality, and embrace sustainable practices. Tune in for insights on evolving state regulations, consumer-driven cultivation trends, and Yofumo’s expanding global footprint beyond cannabis.

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Cannacurio Podcast Episode 72 Transcript

Ed Keating  
Welcome to the Cannacurio Podcast powered by Cannabiz Media. I’m your host, Ed Keating, and today we’re joined by Joe Edwards, Chief Science Officer at Yofumo. Joe, welcome!

Joseph Edwards  
Thank you for having me. Ed, how you doing this afternoon? Doing all right.

Ed Keating  
I’m doing all right. Well, thanks for joining me today. You know one thing, one story I wanted to share is that when I went to my very first MJBiz in 2015 I sat down, unbeknownst to me, next to one of the founders of Yofumo, Alfonso Campalans, and he was sort of one of the first people I met in the industry. And I’m curious how the company has changed and evolved. Because 10 years, as I’ve learned in cannabis, is a long time.

Joseph Edwards  
You are absolutely right. That’s that’s a lifetime ago. Man Alfonso compliments a damn I haven’t thought about very frequently in the last several years. You’re absolutely right. One of our original founders of really great idea, man came up with some really radical concepts around compliance, or how the industry was shaping up, and kind of very much taking a FinTech approach to which is the background he had come from, and really looking at compliance and compliance standards and how regulatory structures were really going to take shape around the cannabis industry at that time was so very much in the air. So he was very involved in lobbying and getting in front of those special interest groups and kind of those seed to sale tracking groups, and kind of really trying to structure how that compliance is going to take shape, specifically around microbial regulations, hasn’t been hasn’t with us for quite some time. Like I said, a great idea, man, but went on to build other things,

Ed Keating  
cool, cool. Well, but let’s talk about your background. So you know, what was your journey into the cannabis industry? How did you went up here? I mean, obviously you’ve got an interesting educational background that you should touch on, which I think is kind of unique in our space. So, so tell us about that.

Joseph Edwards  
Also, I’m a biochemist and an engineer. Many years ago, almost seems like a different life. I was from a small farm town in Ohio, and grew up in the ag community, sitting around corn and soy and some industrial farming around row cropping. So it was always kind of part and parcel to my upbringing and education, and I’m always there in the back of my mind, coming from a long line of well farmers, and it’s still very much a prominent industry within my family, and kind of as I really began to start looking at what I wanted my career path to be, I knew I didn’t want it to be farming, which is coincidental, because I’ve traveled halfway around the world to well, in many respects, to be a farmer. I’m sure my grandfather’s smiling somewhere about that, but kind of taking that industrial ag approach and that science driven data approach, which is kind of, really where the ag industry has found its home. Um, it’s not so simple as just putting a seed in the ground and, you know, waiting for it to mature and harvesting. There’s an immense amount of data. There’s an immense amount of nutrient science, soil science and crop dynamics that really go into that. And kind of coming up and seeing that firsthand, and kind of seeing some of those technologies develop, seeing some of those methodologies develop, was something that I really had a keen interest in, initially, kind of looking from the engineering aspect, you know, how do we look at systems? How do those systems play into that production, and then going far, going a bit farther into the chemical and biological level of, okay, how are those systems actually affecting the plant, and what are those effects doing? How can we manipulate that to have a greater yield, more consistent crop, a more sustainable crop, as well as a more bio secure crop? And then I was about 2009 when Colorado went recreation, sorry, Colorado went medical and he went recreational. 14 kind of had that aha moment where, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s go give it a try. So packed up, packed up the house, packed up the family, and moved from Ohio to Colorado, and we’ll never look back. It’s been a crazy journey. Um, I’m a very puzzle driven person, and cannabis has been a never ending puzzle. Each and every day, we’re finding something new, and it’s been immensely cool to be on the cutting edge of that.

Ed Keating  
Oh, that’s great, and that’s an interesting story. I know that when we were starting the company and trying to explain what we’re doing, back when it was early days, one of the phrases we sort of came out of the, almost out of the media industry that cannabis is an ag vertical, but it’s a highly regulated ag vertical, and when we talked about it that way, it kind of normalized. It a bit. It’s a row crop, you know, in a lot of ways. And you know, share some similarities, let’s say with corn or with maybe tobacco, or, you know, hop, etc, but it really is a highly regulated vertical. So when you were talking before about all your approaches, and, you know, how do they, how do we use data and technology make it better, it’s the same problems that I would imagine farmers and other verticals, you know. Been solving for many years.

Joseph Edwards  
Very much so. And it was kind of a juxtaposition on how cannabis was initially viewed. A lot of those methodologies, a lot of those schools of thought, weren’t really brought to cannabis at that onset of the industry, kind of that green rush mentality here, and as it were, coin really led to some interesting business dynamics. What did come from that, though, was a lot of varying methodologies that were never really present in those larger industrial ag row crops because they just didn’t have a place due from labor labor concerns, or just general size and throughput concerns. But with cannabis, I mean, we’re generally looking at smaller crops. I mean, we’re looking at things in square footage, not acreage. So there was a lot of things that were really kind of cool, methodologies, plant training, dynamics, plant steering, Nutrient Application dynamics, that, while always a part of the ag industry had kind of gone by the wayside in favor of some of those more industrialized and consistent practices. And then seeing the industry kind of bring those not unknown methodologies, but those kind of purpose built methodologies of cannabis kind of to light, and then really refining them to the point now where we have, oh man, some incredible purpose built tech, kind of quick example. And when we were initially building out some of those first operations as first cultivations back in oh nine, we were using HVAC units from server farms, which were great for dispersing heat, but horrible for dispersing moisture. We were using lighting systems from the cut flower industry, which, while has a ton of similarities, it’s a different lighting spectrum, different penetration requirements. So we kind of really started refining those technologies, and as we did, we really kind of brought cannabis into its own sphere, where it’s not just any other crop, any other flower, it’s very much its own distinct biomass, its own distinct cultivar, in that sense. But one of the things that was kind of really interesting. There was all the technology that was being put into the upstream the cultivation phases. As I mentioned, we were developing purpose built HVAC, purpose built lighting systems, irrigation fertigation systems. Once we harvested, we got to that post harvest environment. We were going back to the Stone Age. Now we’re moving away from these highly controlled indoor microclimates to, oftentimes, a closet with a Home Depot dehumidifier in it, and going right back to the Stone Age, using some methodologies that, frankly, haven’t been seen outside of history books or the Third World and quite some time, and then really looking at, how is that going to take shape? How do we put technology into that part of the plant, plant cultivation process, and then again, where does that compliance come back around? What are those requirements going to be? And we’ve seen that kind of take shape in a couple of ways, and we have still a huge variance in microbial compliance and regulations, coast to coast, but what we have seen is some standardization. We have maybe five or six general frameworks of regulation now that the cannabis industry rewards them from a microbial compliance standpoint. But even three or four years ago, that wasn’t the case. So as an industry, we’re still slowly refining that, slowly moving forward towards an FDA statuting where we can really say, Okay, this is from a pharma compete standpoint, an SCM standpoint, really where we want to be from a best practice, from an operational standpoint, from biosecurity and compliance standpoint, and that’s kind of really where your fumas Try to position

Ed Keating  
itself, neat. So yeah, the compliance part is interesting, especially on that angle, because, you know, having always worked in compliance in my career, there’s various rates of compliance. Some people comply, some over comply. Some say, Yeah, I’ll just pay the fine, or whatever it is. So I’m curious is, as we look at, let’s say, the 40 or so states in the US that have some type of cannabis program. Do you see huge variations, like, are there some places where people have it, and there are some places where people like, yeah, that’s aspirational. We’ll get to it someday,

Joseph Edwards  
very, very much. So a couple of easy polar examples, Illinois, quite possibly the tightest microbial based regulatory environment within the US, an incredibly small producing community due to those requirements, by no means impossible, but one of those things that the industry is still kind of dealing and coping with is, where does cannabis fall? Is it a medicinal product? Is an adult use recreational product? These are treated very differently. From a medicinal perspective, we’re looking at an API, an active pharmaceutical ingredient. This should absolutely be a very highly regulated, compliant production process, not saying that adult use shouldn’t be, but bringing that medical tag into it really has a lot of connotations around secure. Reconsistency and general availability. When you start talking about medicine, it’s not something that can be inconsistent or becomes sporadically unavailable. And you go to the opposite of the spectrum, we have Oklahoma, which is very much the wild west of cannabis, still lacking in most forms, if not all, seed to sale tracking or really kind of compliance oversight and regulation incredibly easy to gain entry into the market. But because of that, there’s also an overabundance of producers, cultivators, manufacturers and distributors, so kind of trying to find that supply and demand, that elasticity of production has still been elusive in a lot of environments. Yeah,

Ed Keating  
well, and I just sort of reread a statistic from Oklahoma, from essentially an assessment that was done in the program, and if I remember correctly, they found that the state produced 30 times the amount of cannabis this the patients could actually consume. And we know what happens then the tractor trailers leave the state and go to Indiana, New York, wherever, wherever else. So, yeah, definitely a challenge. So let’s focus a little bit on bridging you and your fumo. So you know, how has your background in horticulture and engineering shaped your approach to decontamination and curing technologies? Because it seems like with your background and with the focus that you fumo has it, you kind of have a unique skill set that must put you at the intersection of those two areas, very much so.

Joseph Edwards  
And obviously where that really intersects is understanding the chemical profiles, the volatile organic compounds, specifically, that are present in cannabis, these volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are, frankly, the valuable part of cannabis production. We’re looking at cannabinoids, flavonoids, terpenes, really, kind of the whole reason we cultivate the plan from a medicinal point with our active ingredients, and from an adult use point. None of the same is true, and as it comes to compliance, between microbial compliance, one of the things that we really wanted to look at and kind of ensure, as we kind of build out the system of technology, was that in no way do we want to damage, harm or diminish those volatile organic compounds. The idea of cleaning something, but leaving behind a damaged or no longer completed good, so to speak, was never really a viable option for us. As you start looking at decontamination technologies, there are a plethora of them, everything from Chlorine Dioxide Gas Ionic and radio frequency radiation, ozone based decontamination technologies, you can see hydrogen peroxide based systems, which are kind of directly opposed to cannabis stability, in the sense that it very much damages plant cellular structure. So as we started developing the technology, it was always key for us to preserve those volatile organic compounds as valuable parts of cannabis. And as we started looking at that development pathway, one of the things we really focused on was the ease and accessibility of ozone. And what I mean by that is from a price perspective as well as an operational perspective, radiation technology has been around for quite some time, very prevalent in the ag world as well as the medical worlds. And it’s great technology. It does its job oftentimes too well, but it wasn’t really a technology that was purpose built for leafy biomasses, and there were some drawbacks there, similarly, ozone methodologies that had been used up until kind of we started developing our unique system, very much based on atmospheric deprivation, which is pumping enough non oxygen into a confined environment that you kill everything across the aerobic spectrum, which means oxygen to live. And while that does work, ozone is a free radical oxidizer. It’s non discriminant. It doesn’t care what interacts with In fact, it interacts with everything, but that degree of interaction is based on its saturation and concentration. So we started looking at, how can we control those saturation and concentration levels. Traditional technologies really used a couple of methods, coronal generation, which is passing free oxygen over an open spark, and traditional ozone pumps, which can convert about 21.6% or so of atmospheric oxygen into 03, depending on feed stock and a couple other variables. You can manipulate that to a small degree. But the problem is, it’s a binary system, it’s on or it’s off. That didn’t really give us a lot of ability to access ozone in the way we wanted to from a control perspective, what we did find, though, was that UVC elements, specifically vibrating across the 183 to about 277 207 nanometer range do generate stable ozone from atmosphere. We dialed that into about 185 nanometers, which we found that can the peak stability for us. And then partnering with a group off the east coast, Atlantic ultraviolet to produce a unique element that allowed us to control the exact grams per cubic foot of OH. Zone produced at any given time. From there, we were able to start looking at what’s the necessary concentration of ozone to interact with yeast, molds, bacterias, viruses, fungal compounds, advanced microbial organisms. And what we found was the level necessary to interact and interact with and kill those microbial concerns was far lower than the oxidization rate of those volatile, volatile compounds. And then from there, we really went into, oh, man, probably about six years of continuous testing before we thought we really had a robust system that could meet and exceed all of the compliance requirements, not only across the US, but also for EU producers as well.

Ed Keating  
So Joe, I mean, the way I sort of simplified what you said in my head is, like the old approach was kind of the neutron bomb approach, where, like, boom, you pump a bunch of ozone in and it would kill everything. Highly effective, but, you know, it sort of did too much. And what you managed to do is figure out a way almost. This may not be the right word, but it makes sense in my head to sort of titrate it to the right level. So it’s, is it as effective as you would want it to be? Absolutely.

Joseph Edwards  
And there’s a couple of things that go part and parcel with that. You get some developed microorganisms. Aspergillus is a great example here, that have the ability of metabolic and earnest. Kind of an easy way to think about this. Is it has the ability to fortress or turtle if it’s exposed to an environment not conducive to its growth, replication and essentially life, it goes into a state of preservation, and it can be very, very difficult to deal with. So exposing something like Aspergillus to a very high concentration of ozone can force this expression, making it very, very difficult to remediate. However, looking at it from the other perspective, when we go in with a very small amount of ozone, we’re able to avoid triggering that, triggering that specific trait, and then from there, we’re able to interact with and then kill that particular compound. And that’s true with some other compounds as well, but kind of really looking at what is the required level of ozone, what are the iniquities of each of those individual contaminants, and how can we look at them tactically, instead of, as you said, the neutron bomb approach? How can we have a technology that allows you to directly treat to a known contaminant when we see a COA, a certificate of analysis? Okay, let’s look at that specifically. Let’s look at the number of colony forming units. Let’s look at their dispersion. Let’s look at what they’re quantified and qualified as. And let’s treat to those unique ways, instead of treating for a larger blanket approach. And while both methods are effective, we found that that tattoo approach is far more efficient from a time and throughput perspective, and far less harmful to any volatile organic compounds that are present in not only in cannabis, but in any other biomass

Ed Keating  
interesting. So, you know, sounds like, you know, six years R and D and whatnot. Is that what really led to you guys getting a patent in terms of biomass, sanitation, etc, like, did all that lead into that? Or is that a different part of the story we had

Joseph Edwards  
the patent came a good bit before we finished all the research, we were able to very quickly demonstrate proof of concept, but what took a great deal of time was refining that concept. Okay, it can be done. Are we sure we’re doing it in the best way that we can And invariably, there was small tweaks, minor adjustments, improvements that could be made, and we steadily and slowly made those. Over the course of about half a decade, we went from wooden lined alpha and beta units to industrialized metal of aircraft grade, poly aluminum and pharmaco to paint pharmaco paint poly compounds and 316 health stainless steel, as we kind of really began looking at how the system itself takes place within an operation. And with the cannabis world fairly rapidly moving towards a gacp or GMP approach, it was something that was always going to be a requirement, and we wanted to be ahead of that curve

Ed Keating  
makes sense, and being ahead of that curve does that also keep you ahead of competitors? Because I’m not familiar with the space in terms of, like, are lots of people trying to solve this problem? I imagine it’s a big one, because there’s a lot of biomass being created. There

Joseph Edwards  
are, indeed, as I mentioned, there’s multiple alternate technologies. I would say there’s probably four or five well known decontamination technologies, including ourselves within the space, all with their pros and cons. Example, why we do have the highest throughput and why we do have probably the least impactful technology. Ours is a bit more timely, because we’re using those low concentrations of ozone, because we’re really focused on that voltage organic compound preservation. We do take a little bit more time and process some other technologies, radiation technologies, specifically ionic technologies, have the ability to go through packaging, depending where you are in your process line or your production line, or if you’re facing a recall. That can be a very that can be a huge boom, not having to remove product from packaging or have an additional labor cost in that so i. They’re like, I said pros and cons to all of them, but yeah, there’s many people trying to solve it. We feel that we’re leading the pack in that, but there’s very much so multiple other entities rapidly pursuing the same goal.

Ed Keating  
So, Joey, one thing that leaps out at me is recall. So cannabis media tracks recalls. We have been, you know, almost as long as we’ve been tracking cannabis. And there’s probably, I think, maybe, 400 recalls we have in our in our files. And you also mentioned the COAs that that, you know, are created, I think, through the testing lab process, maybe other places online, are those the kind of artifacts or documents that your team, or maybe the sales team looks at to see, like we could do this better. Or, you know, are there signals that scream out to yo fuma, like there’s an opportunity for us, like, I’m just kind of curious. I know that’s not really a scientific question, but, you know, having the artifact would be like we can fix that very much. So

Joseph Edwards  
a good example of such. Well, I say probably it’s five, maybe six years ago on the state of Colorado went from a 48 hour plate based incubation period for their microbial development and sampling to a 72 hour incubation period. And they saw a massive spike in failure, if I recall right. It was even a 60% overall increase in failure, just based on that additional 24 hours of incubation, and that additional time for whatever microbial contingent may be to grow and develop as we started looking at that, and kind of as that regulation came down the pipe in Colorado. Us, being Denver based, we’re very kind of close to that as it is. Well, right in our backyard. We kind of saw a validation and how we’ve been approaching things. And what I mean by that is we had always looked at scaling up the test. When we went through our EU GMP validation for our first client, we actually looked at the 96 hour incubation time, which was double the requirement for that particular regulatory environment at the time. Because we had seen 72 hour incubation have that massive spike of failure, we wanted to go ahead and test the bigger problem, knowing that if we could solve it at 96 we could absolutely solve it at 48

Ed Keating  
Huh, huh. Wow, pretty cool. Thanks. Thanks for that. That’s and how great you guys kept pushing the boundary. One last sort of key focus that I’ve learned about you fumo, is sustainability and sort of reducing waste. And I know, you know in past interviews, I’ve spoken to people on the packaging side, on the podcast and whatnot, but tell me what sustainability means in your world.

Joseph Edwards  
For us, sustainability as it relates to your fumo and cannabis is all about product recovery and kind of profit maximization. If you’re not able to bring a crop to market, then everything that’s gone into it is essentially wasted revenue. So how, how do we maintain that? How do we allow producers and cultivators to bring the totality of their product to market? How do we limit that waste process? Another example here, at one point in time, remediation wasn’t really a regulated concept or regulated practice, and the only solution that was originally put forward, again, I’ll use Colorado as a reference here, was destroying the product. The idea of destroying 10s of or hundreds of pounds of cannabis after having spent 912, potentially 15 weeks, depending on what your process methodology is on, cultivation is crippling the businesses many went under kind of as those regulations began to tighten, we’ve seen New York’s a good example here. Their first kind of draft of microbial regulations was so restrictive that I can’t imagine any producer being able to effectively operate under it again, we look at Chicago, as I mentioned earlier, of state of Illinois, incredibly strict microbial regulations, but still leaving room for those operators to actually practice and produce Oregon’s another good example here, Oregon kind of has one of the last holdouts of living soil operations up. You know, the idea around living soil is less or no nutrient use, and using natural biome and supporting biological life to actually provide those nutrients. As plants uptake nutrients, they down, take other chemical compounds and finding that balance there. But the downside of that is you do have the propensity for some increased contamination. You have heavy metal specifically gram negative, bio tolerant bacteria, Aspergillus, as Oregon put forward its microbial regulations, they nearly wiped out their own industry as they really didn’t. Kind of take time to think about how those regulations were going to impact the cultivators and operators of the state. Now, by no means should any. Product ever be put forward to the market with Aspergillus? It’s a pathogenic compound known to have negative effects the human condition, but creating a regulatory environment that punishes that instead of providing a solution, wasn’t the answer?

Ed Keating  
Yeah, yeah, huh. Well, let’s move from sort of you’ve been with a company, let’s talk a little bit more about the industry, because it’s always fascinating to hear how people view the trends and where things are going. So in terms of cannabis cultivation today, what are the most pressing challenges, especially regarding the post harvest process, because you’ve been at this a long time now, and are things changing? Like, where the focus eight years ago is this now it’s looking more toward this. Like, how do you see that evolution continuing as we look out a little bit in terms of that post harvest production,

Joseph Edwards  
absolutely. So I think one of the biggest highlights that we’ve seen change is consumer demand, if you kind of rewind the clock, so to speak, them, 234, years, the word terpene was not unknown to the consumer base. Was kind of a mysterious term. And what is the terpene? What does it do? What? Why is it impactful? And why should I, as a consumer care and as we’ve really kind of began to build that knowledge base, now we see consumers much more educated, much more in demand, where we’re not just looking at a high potency number anymore, or which caused a myriad of problems to the industry of everything from lab shopping to potency inflation. Right? Kind of as we think about it, the cannabinoid itself is the vehicle. The potency of that cannabinoid is the velocity, the destination of that vehicle is largely dependent on the terpene contact. What neurosynaptic relays are being triggered. If we load cannabis with trepidlin and linalool, we can very much create a sedative effect. On the other end of the spectrum, if we look at limonene and pining, we can very much create a energizing effect. And towards the middle, we have humane and Mersin, kind of a very euphoric effect. And how do we look at those terpenes? How do we look at those compounds and their conjunction and interaction? And this is what we’ve what this is what we’ve dubbed the entourage effect. And as the consumer has really become come more savvy and understanding of that post post office landscape has really changed to adapt to that. Now we’re looking at curation methodologies. Now we’re looking at product insistencies that really weren’t there before, going from traditional bucket and bin and bag systems for curation, which, while effective, are incredibly inconsistent and oftentimes lack in biosecurity, now we’re looking at curation in sustainable environments. And what I mean by that is the same microclimates that we’re using to cultivate in, we’re now using to cure and dry in as well. So kind of really seeing those technologies being pushed, not only in the upstream cultivation phase, but in that post harvest phase as well. And what we’ve seen is they very much mirror each other. Just because we’ve harvested the plant doesn’t mean the job is done. We’re not just simply drying it and pushing it out the door. Now we’re really looking at, what can we do to maximize not only the product from a potency and terpene perspective, but from a quality and consistency perspective? And again, this comes back to medicine. I like to use the aspirin methodology. If you take an aspirin and it cures your headache, and you take another one, it makes your foot go numb, that’s a huge problem. And as we look at cannabis as a medicine, that’s something that absolutely has to be addressed. Predominantly. We are an adult use market across the US, but there’s still a vast array and kind of contingent of medical patients, people who rely on cannabis every single day. And really seeing those needs, maintaining focus while we’re still developing that consumer driven product. And again, this all comes from a need to have a clean, consistent product, and that starts with, sometimes decontamination, oftentimes some form of remediation, the idea of an agrarian crop being produced in a hermetic environment. While a lovely idea is just that it’s an idea, there’s no real way to completely limit or for bay of microbial development, and we can abate it to some degrees. We can control it to others. But it really comes down to biosecurity. It comes down to cultivation practices, handling practices, sanitation practices, and these are things that we’re seeing take place now in the post harvest and cultivation environments where we’re not seeing workers coming in off the street in their street clothes with the same shoes that you know they may have worn in their own personal cultivation or just out and about in the world. We’re now seeing operators and scrubs, operators and personal protective equipment. We’re seeing a lot more attention being paid to those sanitary requirements. Because if we don’t have a clean product, then we don’t have a product at all. Yeah.

Ed Keating

So, Joe, has has Yofumo changed over time? Because I think in the early, early, early days, I got the impression that it was almost more of a b to c kinda humidor play, you know, back in 2015 as to what they were selling. Whereas now what you’re describing to me, even though you’ve talked about consumer and customer, seems very kind of industrial. Like, you know, I could see, like, MSOs or SSOs wanting to work with you because you’re gonna improve their end product, their efficiency, etcetera. Do I have that right?

Joseph Edwards

You you do. We’re we’re very much a b to b company. There was some development, development verticals that we looked at quite intensely, actually, at the onset of Viofoamos, specifically that consumer model, that humidor shaped model. And the idea was if there wasn’t and at the time, there wasn’t a a regulatory compliance statute around biosecurity Right. Or microbial contamination, but it was still present. It was still there. And, you know, the idea being, how do we allow a consumer to have a clean and safe product? Even if it’s not something that’s being required from a business standpoint, how do we still offer that? The cannabis world, like many others, doesn’t move forward without necessity. So until there was a regulatory compliance statute, there was no call for regulatory compliance from a biosecurity point. As soon as there was, that changed incredibly quickly, and we pivoted along with it. We still do, have a few of the old humidor units left in the shop, and we actually just spoke to a couple we actually just spoke to a a group at Nican last week who has some interest in maybe potentially developing that along with us. I always kind of had a idea in the back of my head of replacing the crisper drawer in your refrigerator, with a Yofumo cabinet, Kind of the idea there being decontamination of fruits and vegetables. The best thing about farm to table is, you know, its freshness and organic nature. The worst thing about it is it came from the farm to the table. There are some things on the farm you probably don’t want on your table.

Ed Keating

That’s a great point. Stuff out of my garden I don’t want on my table either. But, but yeah. Good good good point. So, in terms of trends, you know, looking out always curious to ask my guests, you know, what what they’re looking at. And, specifically, I noticed that you’re speaking in Europe in a couple weeks. I’m gonna be there in June for a conference. I’m curious what your thoughts and expectations are about that market as one of the trends because we think something’s going on there, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on trends in general, but also is there a global opportunity here for companies like ours?

Joseph Edwards

Oh, there’s absolutely global opportunity. You have various South American countries, South African countries, Western European countries already looking at cultivation, already looking at cannabis distribution, both as a medicine as well as adult use. You have exporting countries now, which is a really cool thing to see develop. Germany specifically has been, well, a hot topic issue. Everybody was under the impression from what we had read, what we had seen, and kind of those whispers to the industry that we were gonna see the birth of the world’s largest recreational market. What the reality of that was is Jeremy’s rolling out in a stage, kind of a stage release. They’re in stage one right now. When stage two comes, we don’t know. But they’re starting with a club model. They’re looking at how that develops. And it’s a fairly restrictive club model, fairly limited model.

If I remember right, it’s 500 patients per club. And there’s some additional requirements around there from usage, possession and handling, cultivation. But from a development path development pathway standpoint, it’s likely the better move. As woeful as it was for Yofumo as well as I’m sure many other companies, that Germany didn’t open in the way that we all wanted, I think we’ll see a better market because we’ve given it the time to mature properly instead of kind of forcing that door to the largest recreational market and kind of flooding it, kind of really kind of starting that process slowly, just like it happened here in The States. We were at Mary Jane, Berlin last year, and it was really cool to see, you know, the populist passion.

It was more of a consumption event than I think it was a conference, at least from our perspective. But it was really cool to see those same sentiments that were so prevalent in The US market, five, six, seven years ago. Not that they aren’t anymore, but, you know, they’ve died down a bit. Cannabis has lost a little bit of its China pizzazz in that regard because as you mentioned, we’ve got, you know, 40 plus states now with some form of medical marijuana or recreational marijuana market. It’s not just Colorado and Washington anymore.

You know, it’s not the Amsterdam of the West. But, again, I’m looking at Germany. For the first time ever, you know, they’re able to consume, partake, and utilize cannabis for adult use or medicine. And it was an immensely cool thing to see kind of everyone’s reaction to that and the immense plethora of support, that the populace has for it. So while I think the journey is rolling out a good bit slower than we all had wished, there’s absolutely that drive, that passion, and that development there.

So I think in the next two to three years, we’ll see some very interesting things out of that market. Portugal’s also another fast developing market, as South Africa. Uh-huh. Interesting. Now, I know I was also at McCann, you know, last week and talking to some of our customers and the other vendors there.

Some folks are are having a portfolio approach where they’re not just folks in cannabis because it’s a tough market right now. I mean, we’ve lost a lot of customers who’ve gone out of business, ran out of money. So I I I think I’d seen that Yofumo, you know, has looked at, I think, like, food service and logistics. Are those just areas for you, or are they sort of part and partial of what you’re doing in cannabis? Yes to both.

So we always wanted to be more than just a cannabis company. We wanted to find a way to solve the problem within cannabis, partially because it was a new market. It didn’t have a standardized methodology for sanitization. It didn’t have a prescribed treatment regimen. And it was really something that had a lot of fertile ground, so to speak, no pun intended, for us to grow and develop it.

But we’ve always kinda wanted to move past there. We’ve looked at some projects. We’ve done some projects with some groups out of Spain looking at decontaminating seeds prior to planting for vegetable vegetables grown through hydroponic means, and we’ve seen great success in not only limiting the contaminations of seeds on kind of some of those natural born, viral compounds that can very much stunt or stifle crop growth and development. And we’ve seen some really cool things there, including increased crop consistency, increased germination rate. We’ve looked at some developments for intermodal shipping potentially, kind of how can we potentially incorporate the technology into food or produce delivering trucks.

Kind of a way to think about it. One thing that was kind of surprising to learn, but not surprising when I thought about it for a little bit was that as we look at produce distribution, the farther the truck goes from its point of origin, the higher the rate of spoilage and decay of the product itself. And in some cases, for long haul routes, you may see thirty, forty, or excessive 50% spoilage of a product. Is there a way we could prevent that? Is there a way we could mitigate that?

Is there a way we could extend that product shelf life? Those have always been things in the forefront of our mind, and we’ve slowly looked at developing them over the years. One of the lessons that we learned early on was we kind of had to pick and choose our battles. We couldn’t develop five things at once and do them properly. So we chose to develop well within the cannabis industry, really build a robust piece of technology, that we felt was both bulletproof as well as broadly useful.

And now that we’ve done that, we’re really looking at, okay, how can we solve some of those other problems utilizing the lessons we’ve already learned specifically around seeds and vegetables. And we’ve had some really cool conversations with, European seed and vegetable producers as well as domestic seed and vegetable producers. Still looking for the right partner, but something we’re actively and aggressively exploring. Yes. One quick question popped into my head, more of a yes, no kind of thing is I get the sense that you all must work with some of the standard organizations because that seems to be in a you know, with with that trying to be compliant and whatnot, I imagine that’s gotta have a role somewhere.

It does. There’s I would say probably the most developed standard from a compliance perspective right now is probably EU pharmacopoeia. The US pharmacopoeia is quickly catching up. We have the ASTM organization, which is a standard based organization. Kind of one of the things that we’re internally working on is how can we produce and move towards an ASTM standard, and we’d really like to kind of be the first to achieve that for many reasons.

But it’s absolutely where the industry is going. How it gets there is, while not a mystery, still a bit unknown in the sense that there’s multiple methodologies to solve the issue of bioremediation and bioburden. What’s going to be the best for the industry? I wanna say it’s ours, and we’re put we’re working incredibly hard to make it so. But the reality is is it’s probably a couple of things in conjunction.

It’s fairly rare that we see a standard that locks in a single technology. What we’ll most likely see is a array of methodologies and array of standards, depending on what technological technological pathway that you wanna pursue or what kind of equipment spec that you have for your cultivation and operation. So that’s really where I think from a standardization point, we’ll start to see some interesting work and interesting developments here in the next couple of years. Obviously we all want a federal legalization, which will hopefully come very soon. But one of the things that comes with the federal legalization is again, that unified codex of standards, being able to produce plant a and location a and have it be while not identical.

That does not how plants work, but identical in operation production methodology and delivery from Massachusetts to California is really gonna be something awesome for The US. And kind of as we open up interstate commerce for cannabis through federal legalization, I’m kinda lifting the dormant commerce clause. I think we’ll see a lot of really cool developments. There’s kind of a vast array of cultivars that are almost pocketed and kind of use another analogy, almost like wine to a degree, where we have denomination of origin. So I think that’ll be a really interesting development there.

Excellent. Excellent. So, the legalization thing, you know, obviously, top of mind for any of us inside, our green bubble here in the cannabis industry. And and there’s actually was a lot of press this morning about some folks on both ends of the political, divide being pro Canada, which is kinda interesting. So my question for you, really, the last question is, Joe, do you think the industry has hit bottom yet and, you know, we’re we’re crawling our way back out, or are we still in the valley and, you know, looking for when we’re gonna start crawling back up?

By no means do we hit bottom. I I I think what we’re finding is a firm foothold. As you mentioned earlier, Oklahoma producing 30 x hit 30 x its volume need. I think what we’re finding is that those operators that have the ability to standardize, that have the ability to meet those economies of scale, that have those abilities to adapt are really rising to the top. And as sad as it is to see kind of some of the smaller producers, middle producers, mom and pop producers, go by the wayside.

The way I actually choose to think about it is that they’re not so much, being discarded as they’re being absorbed. And what we’re kind of doing and finding as our own industry is how do we move forward? What is our supply and demand? What is the best way to meet that? And while it currently looks like MSOs are, you know, kind of king of the field, that may change.

There was a point in time where operators and cultivators and entities were trying to grab as many licenses as they could to build out a wide and diverse footprint in the hopes that we’re gonna see a federal legalization, and they were gonna sell out to pharma, they were gonna sell out to big tobacco, or kind of whatever that plan there was. Now we’re seeing, again, a much more tactical approach. Instead of that large kind of land grab of licenses, we’re seeing, okay, how can I really make the best pre roll? How can I perfect production or production techniques or throughput economics? And I think that’s really where we are.

By no means do I think we’ve hit bottom. I think we’re in a bit of a rough patch, and We’ve absolutely seen the price of cannabis decline, but part and parcel of that is the overproduction that we’re currently seeing. And if you look at it on a retail level, we haven’t seen a lot of price shift at the retail level where we’ve seen dramatic price shifts at the wholesale and cultivation levels. So I think we’ll see a balance there. Very much kind of still, in the valley, but, by no means at the bottom.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, Joe, I really appreciate your your thoughtfulness in answering my questions. If people wanna find out more about you or Yofumo, what’s the best way to do that? They can reach out to us directly.

We have multiple contact lines available, all of them accessible through our website, yofumo.com. We encourage anybody to reach out to us. We’re always happy to chat about cannabis, seeds, vegetables, or even just to discuss our technology. Excellent. Well, Joe, it was a real pleasure, and I enjoyed our time together.

Joseph Edwards

You as well. Thank you, good sir.