John SchroyerThe largest licensed medical marijuana grower in Louisiana announced this week that it will be doubling its cultivation capacity to meet increasing market demand.
Good Day Farm, which is a partner with Louisiana State University and one of only two cannabis farmers in the state, is increasing its canopy size by 40,000 square feet within an already immense 225,000-square-foot facility in the town of Ruston, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reported.
The additional grow space is slated to be online by the second quarter of this year and was spurred by changes to state medical marijuana regulations that the company believes will boost demand from patients.
“With the significant improvements made to the medical marijuana program by the Legislature, Good Day Farm Louisiana anticipated patient count and demand would eventually increase, so we expanded into a 225,000-square-foot facility in Ruston (in 2021) with over 220 employees,” David Kirsch, Good Day Farm’s vice president of Ruston operations, told the paper in a statement.
Kirsch added that the company is “planning for the highest forecasted patient needs.” As of mid-2022, nearly 30,000 patients had registered with the program.
The company also operates a second smaller cultivation facility in Baton Rouge.
Good Day spent over $50 million on operations last year, and harvested roughly 17,000 pounds of cannabis in 2022, the Advertiser reported.
