“I hadn’t really thought of the irony.”

The fully-automated drones are programmed to lift off from their base in the middle of the rectangular field, which is then scanned by high-tech cameras and sensors.

“It flies over the perimeter of the entire facility and it has the capability of tracking every single plant,” said Dumaresq.

The aircraft livestream data to an onsite office, he said, detailing the health of each plant, which are all insecticide and pesticide-free.

“It tells us whether a plant’s under duress if some kind of pest is attacking it, or if there’s a breakdown in the watering system,” said Dumaresq.

Weeding out male plants to ensure crop quality, he said, was another task of the hyper-vigilant drones.

CLC’s three drones, worth between $20,000 and $30,000 apiece, also serve as an eye-in-the-sky security patrol over one of the few large-scale outdoor grow operations in a country where the climate doesn’t allow for many.

Its lenses add further surveillance to an operation bristling with fence sensors and cameras, and backed up by flesh-and-blood vigilance, said Dumaresq.

“Unless you’re in the restroom, you’re on video onsite everywhere,” he said.

All of the digital footage recorded by drones is stored in data banks in case regulator Health Canada summons it.

That aerial intelligence and human expertise, said Dumaresq, have resulted in a lush, baptismal crop, whose size has far exceeded expectations.

A forecasted one kilogram of flower yield per plant has blossomed into double that in some of the company’s eight strains that, at the end of September, had been half-harvested.

And a hot, arid summer made for optimal conditions in a region with fertile soil ideally suited for nurturing bud honed locally by more than two decades of often outlaw genetic engineering, said Dumaresq.

“The plants are eight-and-a-half to 10-feet tall and almost as wide,” he said.

It’s also produced a relatively high THC level — up to 24 per cent but typically around 17 to 18 per cent, said the CEO, who doesn’t partake himself.

That’ll be processed onsite into oils, distillates and isolates for commercial and medicinal use.

In an industry struggling with high overhead, CLC’s outdoor model has cut operating and per gram costs by up to 90 per cent of that of its indoor-grown counterparts, he said.

“Indoor production is extraordinarily expensive, it’s energy intensive but we don’t have to spend on lighting,” said Dumaresq.

Calgary corporate security expert Jake Roland said his company has had contacts with large cannabis growers intent on safeguarding their indoor crops with card access systems, but its drone expertise hasn’t been called on in Canada.

“There really aren’t any major outdoor legal grow operations in Alberta that we know of,” said Roland, general manager of Independent Security Solutions.

But it’s not surprising CLC has taken the aerial route, given the increasing deployment of drones in the more conventional agricultural field, he said.

“We do supply agricultural applications for healthy monitoring of crops . . . the drones are just getting so advanced with laser-type measuring technology, you can measure to within a millimetre,” said Roland.

“The sky’s the limit.”

Some cannabis retailers in Canada and the U.S. have also pondered using unmanned aircraft as a home delivery service, but government regulations have generally prohibited that.

For now, Dumaresq said he’s content with their use of the aerial craft — and with another benchmark of mainstreaming the once forbidden industry.

On Thursday, the company was listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the name CLC.