Photo via Eco Firma Farms/ Sam Gehrke
If you’re looking to get a high-paying job in the legal weed green rush, you might want to ditch business school and start taking botany classes.
According to a new survey from 420-friendly Canadian job placement company Cannabis At Work, cultivation jobs are in incredibly high demand and come with some of the largest paychecks across the legal pot landscape. But because the controversial plant has been largely left out of traditional farming education, marijuana businesses have had a hard time finding qualified growers to helm their operations.
“If there’s anywhere in the sector where we’re seeing a talent shortage or skill shortage, it’s on the cultivation side,” Cannabis At Work CEO Alison McMahon told the Star Edmonton.
It may grow like a weed, but to produce enough pot to run a successful cultivation site with hundreds or even thousands of plants, corporate-funded legal cannabis operations are looking for a mix of skill, knowledge, and experience from other plant-related industries — and they’re checking resumes thoroughly.
With salaries regularly hovering around and above the $100,000/year mark, McMahon says that agriculture professionals from around world are beginning to look towards the sweet leaf.
“A couple years ago, you had to almost coax people past being afraid of career suicide, and were paying a bit of a premium for those corporate service people to join the cannabis industry,” said McMahon to the Star. “Now we’re seeing that level out.”
In America, there are already more than 200,000 marijuana jobs across legal weed states, with more cannabis reforms and new businesses arriving everyday. Across the border in Canada, the country’s plan to legalize cannabis this summer is set to explode both the local and international pot industry alike.
“This has already been a crazy industry, it’s about to get even wilder,” McMahon told the Star. “We’ve seen jobs created in the market that literally didn’t exist before, and I think we’re just going to start to see a whole lot more of that. And right away, retail recruitment is going to get underway in a big way.”
(h/t Forbes)
