This article originally appeared in the January 2017 print edition of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.
Jesce Horton is a new breed of cultivator. Not a grower steeped for years in the underground cannabis world or a suit-and-tie convert from the corporate world, Horton is part of a new generation of young professionals bringing specialized skills into the cannabis industry.
Prior to becoming a professional cannabis cultivator, Horton worked in a variety of positions for manufacturing and electronics conglomerate Siemens. One of those positions was Certified Energy Manager, in which he worked with major American manufacturers, including Chrysler, on reducing their energy usage and environmental footprint. Horton and his team earned awards for their work, and those experiences have shaped his cultivation practices.
“I really got that view of the importance of, first, energy-efficiency, and understanding that that's important from a production standpoint, lowering your cost,” Horton says. “But also, I got the real view from the marketing standpoint, and that people care about it, and customers care about it.”
Horton is the first to admit that, as an engineering student at Florida State University, he never thought he would be making a living from cannabis. (“We didn’t really understand what was happening on the West Coast [back then],” he says.)
Today, Horton is the owner of Panacea Valley Gardens, a medical cannabis cultivation business in the Columbia River gorge near Portland, Ore., and of Panacea, a separate, adult-use dispensary. He also is the founder and president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA), the first nonprofit to focus on increasing diversity in the cannabis industry, and is developing the Saints Cannabis project, what he hopes will become a Portland cannabis culture hub. And he’s doing it his own way.
To read the full article in Cannabis Business Times' January 2017 edition, click here.
