yeah, whether they're headed to market or not, our priority is on 'medicinal value' and not taste or potency. (also: the medi market is much more aesthetically forgiving than the commercial one. most patients would rather have bugs than poisons.) most people would ask what the difference between med value and potency is; IMO there's a HUGE difference, which is a long-ass digression, unavoidable in explaining my view of cannabis as medicine, so here goes:
i'm personally wary of hydro farmers' tendency to look exclusively at quantifiers based in empirical science and say things like, "...all the plants needs are met so well."
as somebody with a metaphysical as well as existential view on life development, i would ask, "how do you know that ALL of its needs are being met, when you're only factoring in the needs that are measurable in units, by our scientific process?" you can feed/water/clothe/shelter a child optimally and efficiently but you can't be sure you're meeting all his/her needs. maybe the plant wants to be talked to/addressed (aside from the added CO2 factor). maybe it wants to be touched. does science care? maybe, but it still has no way of measuring things not apparent to our (or a more sensitive instrument's) 5 senses, like whether a plant wants to be talked to or touched, or planted in dirt. not that i'm some flake that goes around talking to and carressing my plants or anything, just hypothetically, if they wanted for these things, how would we know, you know? i do, however, believe that it wants to be planted. as a student of life it is my sincere belief that there are energies at play beyond our wildest imaginations, much less our 5 senses.
science falls short as far as cannabis goes, even in the measurable factors; they've only scratched the surface of terpene interactions, for instance, and any biologist knows they're there and that they affect the high. why wouldn't they also affect the med value? current medical science hasn't even gotten beyond examining delta9THCs and CBDs as active medicinal ingredients. anybody who's used marinol will tell you it just aint the same as a good old-fashioned joint or brownie. which leads me to believe that there are more chemical compounds at play in the medicinal value of cannabis than just those 2.
i've grown hydro, aero, soilless, soilless with coco, dirt, and various shits, and each has its place and advantage, just in my *medigrow, the onus is on recreating the natural (as possible) conditions that prompted cannabis to become a medicine in the first place, in order to maximise *that* particular quality. i know firsthand that hydro revolutionised cannabis horticulture, that it produces excellent and strong MJ. i just have my doubts whether it produces excellent *medicine*.
i know that as a hydro farmer you're just trying to help me be more efficient/reduce my workload and i'm grateful for that. but you might as well be trying to convert sholem asch to catholicism. ;)
