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March 29, 2024 12:08 am
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Cannabis Co. To Host Moapa Meeting

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Map showing the location of an industrial cannabis greenhouse facility being proposed by Ikanik Farms, Inc in the Warm Springs area of Moapa. MAP COURTESY OF GOOGLE MAPS.

The town of Moapa may become the home to an agricultural enterprise entirely new to the community. Over the past few months, California-based company, Ikänik Farms, has been gauging community interest in the possibility of building a large greenhouse facility for the cultivation of marijuana in the community.

Representatives from the company have approached the Moapa Town Advisory Board (MTAB) twice and have met with individual members of the board to outline the details of their proposal.

But next week, the company will be hosting an event where the whole community will be invited to come and learn some of the details of what the Ikänik Farms company has in mind.

The event will be held on Monday, September 9 at the Moapa Recreation and Community Center at 1340 E. State Highway 168.

The format of the event will have two parts. Firstly, at 6:00 pm the company will host an employment fair. This portion would be aimed at community members who might have a potential interest in working at the proposed facility. During this segment, representatives would explain the various positions that would be available and what they entail. Attendees could ask questions and leave contact info for the possible future time when interviewing for positions might begin.

In an interview last week, Joe Devlin, the Ikänik Farms senior vice president of market development, said that the proposed plant would be expected to employ 40+ people in high-paying agricultural production jobs. Starting pay for these jobs would be set at $18 per hour.

Devlin said that there would be a spectrum of different positions needed to staff the facility.

Positions would include everything from security to master growers to research scientists. Operations employees will be needed to maintain and trim the plants.

Plumbing and mechanical experts would have to be kept on hand to maintain the hi-tech, high efficiency irrigation systems. And experts would be needed to keep the internal environmental systems operating. In addition, the plant will employ scientists such as geneticists and other technical experts to do research on the operation.

“The cannabis industry is not like any other agricultural industry that you’ve seen out there,” Devlin said. “It is so dynamic and is constantly evolving and developing. It requires a broad spectrum of talents to keep up with that change.”

In the second portion of the event, beginning at 7 pm, the company will be hosting a Town Hall Meeting. This will be for community members to learn more about the company and ask plenty of questions.
“We are looking to explain our proposal in detail to the people of Moapa,” Devlin said. “And that includes, not just the project, but who we are as a company and a group of individuals.

Devlin said that the company prides itself on being a community-oriented company. “The senior members of the company, most of us are parents of young children and spend time volunteering for non-profits in the community. I myself have spent a lot of free time in coaching youth sports and I love that. We are all pretty normal, upstanding people in society.”

In addition, Ikänik Farms is intent on upholding high social values, Devlin said.
“In our operations we have built in things like youth prevention education programs for many of our frontline employees,” Devlin said. “I know that may seem odd at the gate.

But the fact is that our employees are vehicles of information into the communitiy. Each of them have a network friends and relations. And in this field, they get asked a lot of questions. So we have initiatives to educate them toward youth prevention and the clear message that these products are not for young people.”

Ikänik Farms owns facilities functioning across a broad range of the cannabis production chain. They have large cultivation facilities located in Adelanto and Sacramento, California. In addition they operate distribution and retail dispensary facilities in San Bernardino and Palm Springs, California.

The proposed facility in Moapa would be the company’s first foray into agricultural production of the plant outside of California. But Devlin emphasizes that the greenhouse is all that the company is interested in building here. There are no intentions, now or in the future, to build a processing facility or a retail dispensary here.

“The product would merely be harvested here and put into vacuum sealed containers,” Devlin said. “Then, under very tightly secured conditions, it would be transported and sold to extraction facilities here in Nevada.”

The site being targeted for the facility is on a hilltop overlooking the Warm Springs area, on a lot adjacent to the Warm Springs cemetery. Devlin explained that this site was identified as ideal for the facility.

“It checked off a lot of boxes for us that are sometimes hard to check,” Devlin said.
These include flat ground with no grading needed, available hookups to utilities like power and water, an ideal layout for security purposes and convenient, discreet access.

Devlin explained that the company had identified an access road to the site that would not involve employee vehicles going past the cemetery.

Even so, the traffic impact would be fairly minimal to the area, Devlin said. “We would have about 40 jobs in two shifts,” Devlin said. “So that is maybe 20 cars every eight hours. It would not be a lot of traffic.”

Devlin said that he and his colleagues are looking forward to discussing their proposal with the people of the Moapa community next week.
“We are really excited about coming to Moapa!” Devlin said. “We hope that the folks out there will come out, ask questions and learn that we truly want to be a good neighbor. We want to be a part of that community and to make a contribution there; and we really do mean that.”

Click HERE to see a map of the proposed facility for Ikanik Farms.

 

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