GROWING GREEN

Cannabis cultivation company talks change from medical to recreational marijuana

Nearly 11 weeks ago, dispensaries across Missouri were approved to start sales of recreational marijuana.

Sunrise Dispensary in Maryville is one of the fve locations in Missouri from AgriGenesis, a marijuana cultivation and production company.

Richard Gunnels, a fifth-generation farmer in Missouri, founded Agri-Genesis after seeing the impact that medical marijuana had on the people around him. With nearly three decades of farming experience and an interest in modern agriculture, he added on to his family’s traditional row crop farming with the new market for cannabis.

Sean Carriger, president of Agri-Genesis, has been an owner and operator in the cannabis industry for around a decade. Coming from a career in oil and drilling rigs and running his own safety technology company, he decided to enter the cannabis market.

“I ended up being a liaison for this company I invested in with the regulators and the Marijuana Enforcement Division in Colorado,” Carriger said. “As I was playing consultant, trying to help our company build this facility, I fgured out like I’m one of the most knowledgeable people in the room just because of my oil and gas experience on this specifc topic.” tion, Carriger said the hardest part of the change to recreational use in Missouri was the higher volume of customers.

He then took a senior role in the company, helping them get of the ground while continuing his work in oil and gas. Taking a leap of faith, he became the CEO of the company for three years.

“In the medical market, there was a 1-to-1 ratio of patients to paid patient consultants or workers,” Carriger said “... They changed that to a 3-to-1 ratio which really helps us have, you know, three times as many customers on the foor at any given time.”

Despite this being a big transition in Missouri, Carriger and other team members had gone through this change before in other states that legalized recreational use, so they had been preparing for months in advance to the ofcial approval by the state to sell for recreational use.

“We were ready with line stanchions and how to organize the traffic and digital cues on customers coming in and online orders, and we have drive-thru in our retail locations, so we were really prepared for the increase in activity,” Carriger said.

He said though they were prepared, it was up in the air when the official announcement would be made that they could start selling recreationally. Several days before anticipated, the sale of recreational marijuana was approved.

“It was like ripping the Band-Aid off just to tell our staf,” he said. “You know, it’s seven in the morning and said ‘we’re going live for (recreational) right now, and here’s your checklist that you gotta get through.’”

The Maryville location is one of the

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Up to

300 pounds of fower is harvested every Monday.

15 acres of land is dedicated to the 56,000 square-foot facility in Macon, Missouri.