Tracking Pot Plants A Growing Field

The Marijuana Business Factbook 2015 estimated that the market for marijuana in the stats will rise to $3.1 billion this year as legalization continues to spread from sate to state.

The growing market has created a drove of small businesses doing everything from delivering pot to customers' doors to providing pot-based accommodation for marijuana tourists.

However, there is one gap in the marketplace that is suddenly gaining a lot of attention— indexing and tracking marijuana plants.

Changing Image

With marijuana supporters pushing for more legalization and working to change the image of pot sales from a seedy criminal operation to a white collar business, the need for a way to track the movement of marijuana plants from the field to the point of sale has become increasingly important.

Startups Emerge

So far, two startups have risen to the forefront of marijuana tracking with software systems capable of following a farmer's inventory. BioTackTCH and MJ Freeway both charge a monthly fee and offer either cloud-based or onsite software. However, while both companies offer programs that automate much of the tracking process, a significant amount of data entry is still required.

Enter The Big Guns

Seeing an opportunity to fill a void, several big name companies are also looking to get in on the growing marijuana trade by helping manage the supply chain. Xerox Corp XRX has already put in a bid to supply Washington with a marijuana indexing and tracking system and Viridian Sciences is also developing its own system.