After tending to the family apple orchard in Carlisle, VanderMarel launched the Green Organic Dutchman before leaving to put her agriculture and industry experience to work at a new venture — growing cannabis organically outdoors under the power of the sun.

48 North Cannabis Corp., of which VanderMarel is co-CEO, is awaiting the green light from Health Canada to proceed on a licence to cultivate 100 acres of pesticide-free cannabis on farmland south of Brantford.

"We are nearing the finish line," she said of the application. "We haven't had any negative feedback from (Health Canada) and we've had some positive feedback."

"There are no assurances for sure, but they do understand the necessity of the timeline and we are aggressively pursuing approval very, very soon."

Publicly listed 48North completed a $28-million financing this week to prepare for the next phase of its operation — planting and harvesting 40,000 kilograms of cannabis from a fenced and secure field in Brant County, four kilometres from Six Nations Reserve.

If they get the OK, they will be the first in the country to legally grow outdoors.

Since they are on an existing farm outside of a municipal boundary, they are free to cultivate crops of their choice, the company contends. And discussions with their Six Nations neighbour to employ up to 200 people for the expanded operation are at an advanced stage.

Since 48North announced its intention last year to seek approval for outdoor crops, and it signed a conditional contract to supply Quebec's legal retailer, other big competitors such as CannTrust have announced growth plans in the great outdoors.

"The cost to set up an outdoor grow operation is significantly less than it is for greenhouse or indoor, so I expect a lot of businesses are going to give outdoor production a shot," said Matt Lamers, international editor for Denver-based Marijuana Business Daily.

Without the need to run power to lights and cooling units, VanderMarel estimates their costs will drop to 25 cents a gram for a harvested crop outdoor, compared with 90 cents a gram for greenhouse production and up to $2 a gram at indoor operations.

The destination for outdoor product is edibles and oils for vape pens — a market Lamers estimates will grow to 30 per cent of total cannabis-related sales once these products are approved later in the year.

Of the 40,000 kilograms that 48North expects to harvest in September (if they get approval to plant by June), 90 per cent of the product will be extracted for THC distillate used in vaporizers and other products. Premium-grade grinders and vape accessories is an aspect of 48North's business rollout.

Outdoor is not expected to put a dent in the growth of greenhouse or indoor ops because of the number of uncontrollable conditions present outside.

"People prefer to grow it indoor because they can control the environment and all the variables and therefore they can presumably get a higher yield from the plants," Lamers said.

Dan Sutton, founder of B.C. industry leader Tantalus Labs, said "outdoor production is not inherently risky" but it adds another level of risk management in the selection of plants for stability and disease resistance as well as in quality assurance considerations at harvest time.

Though VanderMarel recognizes they will have only one crop versus the four crops of their indoor competitors, 48North will benefit from the size of the field operation, which translates to 3.8 million square feet. By comparison, Canopy Growth's Tweed Farms greenhouse in Niagara-on-the-Lake is one million sq. ft.

VanderMarel says outdoor plants will have uninhibited opportunity to spread their roots in soil and grow taller than what might be possible in a restricted environment.

"What differentiates us is that we're a health and wellness company and we're focused on having high quality products at a reasonable price for consumers," said VanderMarel, who was a critical care pediatric nurse at McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton before she and her husband founded Green Organic Dutchman in 2014.

After they sold controlling interest in GOD and a new management team arrived, she left in early 2018 to found cannabis startup Good & Green in Brantford.

Late last year she merged her company with the existing Kirkland Lake operations of publicly listed 48North, whose CEO Alison Gordon shares her perspectives of a male-dominated cannabis industry.

"We're trying to build a credible new industry, and I think we need to set our standards higher than some of the poor behaviours we've seen."

The vision is a holistic cannabis grower run by two women who want to reinvent an industry they feel is power-hungry in more ways than one.

"I think educated consumers are very ecoconscious," VanderMarel said. "I think that with our outdoor facility our power consumption is minimal — other than security system that's the only power we're using."

She observed from a recent trip to California that cannabis was selling in one-ounce bags with the price-savings built into that larger volume.

The producing patterns of California wine giants may be applicable to the cannabis industry, Lamers notes, with heavier consumers of wine motivated by price over quality.

"If you are looking at someone who is consuming a lot of wine or a lot of cannabis, it's probably going to be lower end cannabis at lower price points," Lamers said. "Maybe this is where outdoor production finds its consumers, along with edibles."

With supply bottlenecked, it's too early to measure purchasing patterns, but analysis from the Denver-based Marijuana Policy Group indicates that Canadian demand, driven by heavy users, could exceed 900,000 kg — 50 per cent greater than Ottawa's own estimates.

About 25 per cent of users will account for 80 per cent of recreational marijuana use in Canada, according to study results in MB Daily.