Iama Culture looks to cultivate healing craft strains

Douglas County cultivation facility license hopeful Iama Culture Company, led by Quintin and Abigail G. Eason, brings years of craft agriculture experience to their application and cultivation plan.

The Easons are Missouri transplants, Quintin from Mississippi and Abigail from Iowa. The couple met in Arizona in 2002 and moved to Missouri 5 years ago. They’ve done a variety of farming, from breeding heritage pigs for restaurant pork to seed production, flowers, and berries.

Abigail is CEO of Iama and Quintin, who has an education in biology and culinary arts, serves as lead cultivator. They also have an engineer on contract who works for NASA developing their security plan.

“We really thought and felt that this is what we were supposed to do,” Quintin said. “We sold all of our stuff and used all that to start Iama.”

Iama is Hebrew/Old World Egyptian, meaning “a healing” or “a means to heal.”

The cultivators plan to use a combination state of the art greenhouses for their grow. The greenhouses will feature light deprivation techniques to enhance strain growth. 

“All the benefits from the power of the sun with the bio-security of a greenhouse,” Quintin said. “The greenhouse can operate by itself, plus we’re going to do some trials to try to do different things outside.”

The company will narrow their strains to a few varieties of different levels of CBD, THC, and THC-V, offering different tiers of product for sale, and strategically scaling the operation. 

“We want to scale up at a healthy pace,” Quintin said. “We’re going to lead the market because we’re nimble and flexible. That gives us the opportunity to do this.”

The Easons are completely debt-free, an asset in an industry that is investment-heavy. 

“We farm responsibly,” Quintin said. “We’ve been doing it for many, many years. We do it with care and concern, not volume, in mind. We focus on building those client relationships and developing a quality product. It is pivotal to our success and if we can’t do it, we shouldn’t be in the business. The people who are driving the industry are the ones with the patients in mind. I’d rather produce 50 pounds of quality product as opposed to 500 pounds of inferior product.

“Patients should know there is a place they can trust,” he said. “We’re never going to be put in a position to be profitable by delivering an inferior product. We don’t use pesticides. Credibility and trust are our priorities. We want repeat customers and we want you to be happy with the product. I’d like you to be blown away with whatever you’re getting, whether it’s high CBD or high THC.”

Quintin hopes the stigma continues to decreases as the industry continues to develop. “Medical research and education will continue to drive the industry forward. I hope it becomes more mainstream and patients not feel like they need to hide in their closet to take care of themselves. I hope the industry weeds out who is not really in it for the right reasons. I don’t like these big, big corporations coming in and taking over and driving the market for their own profitability.”