RII Technical Advisory Council Demonstrates How Data-Driven
Collaboration Can Improve Policies and Practices
The culmination of the nearly year-long efforts by RII’s Water Working Group to study water usage in the cannabis industry will take place March 10 during a New Frontier Data hosted industry briefing webinar. The webinar will focus on the policy and commercial implications of the findings from the newly released report titled Cannabis H2O: Water Use and Sustainability in Cultivation.
The report was initiated as a partnership by RII, New Frontier Data and the Berkeley Cannabis Research Center. However, the strength of the milestone is best exemplified by the active engagement of the wing of RII’s Technical Advisory Council who came together to advise the project.
The Water Working Group included public sector officials, category-leading technology manufacturers, engineering services providers and cultivators representing indoor, outdoor and greenhouse methods of production. The group met four times throughout 2020 to:
- Determine how to standardize, collect and analyze data from a variety of sources via RII’s Cannabis PowerScore platform, while ensuring producer confidentiality
- Establish water usage benchmarks by cultivation method and industry-wide comparisons to other agricultural sectors to inform a variety of policy and industry stakeholders so they can make data-driven decisions without relying on old, inaccurate estimates that often conflate today’s regulated market with the lingering illicit market
- Identify and engage additional peer reviewers to validate the report’s findings and recommendations
It is only through this sort of collective intent and action that solutions advancing resource efficiency will come to fruition throughout agricultural sectors. RII tips our hat to the members of our Water Working Group for demonstrating the power of collaboration!
