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IN-DEPTH
The first state-approved marijuana microbusiness in Springfield is laying roots — or planting seeds — in a nondescript building close to the intersection of Glenstone Avenue and Division Street.
Monsta Farms, LLC, is a Missouri-approved micro-cultivator — the first to appear in Springfield. The microbusiness license was awarded to Monsta last year and the small, two-owner company has begun taking the steps to become fully operational, including signing a lease on a Springfield warehouse and laying out plans with the state.
Monsta Farms expects to receive commencement from the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) later this year, at which point the business will be allowed to take the steps to be fully operational. The city of Springfield issued a business license for the micro-cultivator earlier this year, and a commercial building permit was issued in mid-April.
The Missouri microbusiness program was introduced to give marginalized and underrepresented groups access to the burgeoning, newly legal marijuana industry. Since the first applications were submitted in 2023, the program has been plagued by a host of bad players who have tried to game the system, and a high percentage of licenses that were awarded have been revoked. DHSS has rewritten draft guidelines for applications which have allowed for more application denials, and the state hopes there will be fewer revocations ahead.
As a micro-cultivator, Monsta Farms can grow up to 250 flowering marijuana plants at a time, a much smaller operation than the up to 30,000-square-feet of flowering canopy space a comprehensive licensee is granted. The company wants to use its micro-status to become Springfield’s cultivator of “boutique-styled cannabis products,” co-owner Shelly Stanley said.
Banks of grow lights in Monsta Farms Springfield cannabis production facility. The company is waiting for a final application step to be completed before they can begin growing. (Photo by Jym Wilson)
Boutique-styled means “just stuff you can’t find around here,” like “unique, odd kind of things,” said Stanley, who is the minority owner of the business. “We’re going to start with just flower products, maybe some pre-rolls.”
Stanley’s business partner and majority owner, Jared Saint, has been growing marijuana his entire adult life. Saint is a disabled veteran, having retired from the Army in 2013, giving Monsta Farms eligibility for a micro-cultivation license.
Saint is the cannabis grower in the business. Besides being a co-owner in Monsta, the 44-year-old works at American Grower’s Supplies, located at 810 W. Kearney St.
The plan is to take some time to figure out what strains Monsta wants to grow in Springfield, Saint said. With a small operation, the company can’t afford the massive clipping machines and other equipment that makes harvests easier, so it will all be organic hand-trimming and a lot of manual labor for the three-person company.
According to the website, these licenses are essentially small businesses that are designed to allow marginalized or under-represented individuals to participate in the legal marijuana market. (Illustration: health.mo.gov)
Microbusiness licenses are only issued to eligible individuals and entities, allowing for marginalized or under-represented individuals to take part in the Missouri marijuana market, according to information on the website of the Division of Cannabis Regulation (DCR), a division of DHSS. Microbusinesses operate at a smaller scale than medical or comprehensive marijuana licensees.
A microbusiness license is also designed to be a path to cannabis business ownership by those “who might not otherwise easily access that opportunity, such as those with a net worth of less than $250,000 or veterans with a service-connected disability,” according to the DCR release.
There are two types of microbusiness licenses: Wholesale and dispensary facilities. Wholesale facilities include the cultivation and manufacturing of marijuana and cannabis products, while dispensaries sell those products to the consumers. Microbusiness liscensees may only do business with other microbusiness liscensees. Microbusinesses cannot transfer product to or from a medical or a comprehensive facility.
Monsta Farms cannot sell any product directly to consumers, only to microbusiness dispensaries. The company’s small grow facility is not open to the public and no sales are made from the building.
There are 56 wholesale microbusiness licensees and 14 dispensary microbusiness licensees throughout Missouri, which are either operational or working toward that goal, DCR Spokesperson Lisa Cox said in an email to the Springfield Daily Citizen.
There will be three rounds of microbusiness licenses awards, with 48 licenses being awarded in each round. Two rounds have already been issued, with the last round expected in 2025. Each round awarded six licenses in each of the eight Missouri congressional district, including two micro-dispensary licenses and four wholesale facility licenses.
Monsta, which won the lottery in the second round of drawings, was not the first company awarded a microbusiness license in Springfield. High Aroma, LLC, was awarded a micro-dispensary license in District 7, which includes Springfield. However, months later, DCR revoked the license it awarded to High Aroma.
High Aroma’s license was revoked, along with multiple other companies that were awarded a license, due to numerous violations. In a DCR press release concerning the revocations, DCR said the violations included providing false or misleading information in the application and failure to demonstrate the microbusinesses were owned and operated by eligible individuals.
While the business listed a physical address that was in Springfield, the number listed on High Aroma’s application was registered to an Arizona-based business, Cannabis Business Advisors (CBA), according to previous Springfield Daily Citizen reporting.
The revocations have been a plague on the microbusiness program. Of the 96 total licenses that have been issued since the program started in 2023, regulators have revoked more than a third, according to DCR.
Jared Saint adjusts a light in one of the grow tents at Monsta Farms in Springfield. (Photo by Jym Wilson)
A pattern has emerged in the revocations. Groups of advisors or individuals have flooded the microbusiness lottery by recruiting people who meet the eligibility requirements and then offering the individuals contracts that limited their profit and control of the business.
Arizona-based Cannabis Business Advisors was one such company that appeared on many microbusiness applications. John Payne, a well-known Missouri cannabis consultant, appeared on 329 microbusiness applications in 2024 as the designated contact, according to the Missouri Independent.
In December 2024, DCR announced new proposed rules for the lottery program that were designed to combat the predatory practices, according to a DCR press release at the time.
The rules revisions should lead to less microbusiness licenses being revoked in the future, Cox said in the email.
“The draft rule revisions included changes that better support ensuring microbusinesses are issued to eligible individuals and provide a structure for verification review before licensure, allowing for denial of applications, and in turn, leading to fewer revocations,” the DCR spokesperson said.
The majority of revocations were for micro-dispensary licenses, with a few cultivation revocations. Saint, majority owner of Monsta, said that’s because there’s more money on the dispensary side. Micro-dispensaries have no limits on what they can sell, but micro-cultivators are limited to 250 plants at one time.
The Missouri microbusiness landscape is “a paint-by-number type-of-thing,” Saint said. “They’re making it up as they go because the rules are being abused so they’re having to change the rules and alter them.”
The high percentage of revocations has caused some holes in the microbusiness landscape. Each of the eight Missouri districts were supposed to have multiple cultivators and dispensaries well on their way to commencement. The idea was to have these companies, who can only do business with other microbusinesses, working in lockstep. Instead, only pieces of the market have been approved, and that’s left microcultivators with no dispensaries as customers in their designated region.
Monsta is in coordination with a Kansas City-based microdispensary that is on its way to commencement, meaning as soon as Monsta is operational, it will have at least one microdispensary in the state to sell product to. There has not been a micro-dispensary approved in Springfield after High Aroma’s awarded license was revoked.
It’s formed a close group of microbusiness licensees throughout the entire state, Stanley said.
“The microcommunity is kind of like really tight-knit, bouncing ideas and plans, and sharing information,” Stanley said.
Jared Saint, left, and Shelly Stanley co-owners of Monsta Farms, the first cannabis growing microbusiness to be established in Springfield pose in the company’s production facility. The lights behind them will be used on plants that will produce buds to be sold to micro-distributors. Monsta Farms will not have a public retail presence. Photographed in Springfield, MO on Sunday, June 8, 2025. (Photo by Jym Wilson)
The system has worked well for Monsta, however, Saint said. From the moment the company was awarded a micro-cultivation license in the lottery drawing, the experience with DCR has been great.
“There’s a lot of people available to help you and not a lot of people that need help,” Saint said. “There’s still people from the first lottery that haven’t even put in the paperwork for commencement.”
Monsta is trying to move as fast as possible. The company was awarded a license around July 2024, got the license in hand in August and in December, the owners signed a lease on the nondescript, small building, Stanley said.
“As soon as we got the license number we started going gangbuster with the facility, getting equipment,” Monsta Farm’s minority owner said. “We were like, ‘If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it!”
There are a lot of steps to take to get to commencement, Stanley said, but Monsta hopes to receive the all-clear from DCR anytime between summer and fall 2025.
The third and final round of the microbusiness lottery will be awarded later in 2025, according to Cox. The timeline for the drawings has not been set yet.
Spare grow lights in Monsta Farms Springfield cannabis production facility. (Photo by Jym Wilson)
Each micro-cultivator, after receiving commencement, has a one-year period where the business can bring in any strains of plants as long as they measure less than eight inches tall, Stanley said. It allows the company to choose the strains it wants to regularly grow and get those strains in the shape they want.
“We have a year of what’s called ‘immaculate conception,’” Stanley said. “The state just turns a blind-eye to what strains we bring in.”
Saint and Stanley are excited to start playing with strains. The business wants to grow some uncommon strains, like Strawberry Cough, Black Afghan Magic, Slurricane and Super Chocolate.
“We haven’t completely figured out what we’re going to do,” Saint said. “That’s the cool thing about growing your own, you get to try the stuff.”
The company technically has three years to become fully operational, but Monsta hopes to get to that level much quicker. The nondescript warehouse space is small for a grow operation with about 3,900 square feet. Monsta Farms aims to start with about 100 marijuana plants, which will be housed in two 10-foot by 20-foot tents, complete with 33 hanging grow lights.
“We’re so small that we just don’t care about slamming 10,000 plants out,” Saint said. “We can work with it in a different way.”
A microbusiness license sets the path toward a full comprehensive license, giving manufacturers full access to the adult recreational market in Missouri. While the state is not issuing any more comprehensive licenses at this time, when there is a need in the market to do so, half of those licenses must go to microbusinesses, according to DCR rules. It will be a lottery drawing also.
DCR “shall award by lottery at least 50% of any new licenses available to satisfy the minimum requirement to applicants who are owners of a marijuana microbusiness facility that has been in operation for at least one year and is in good standing with the department and is otherwise qualified for the license,” according to a DCR press release.
Stanley and Saint said they expect to enter the drawing for a comprehensive license in a few years time. It would be a lot bigger operation, and one that would take some time to reach maturity.
“You’d shoot your numbers up from 250 to 10,000 plants,” Saint said. “They’re giving us a chance to be able to grow.”
The microbusiness license award was a magical moment for the owners. Monsta Farms applied for a micro license in the first round, but was not selected. To see themselves awarded in the second round was like a dream come true.
“It’s like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket,” Stanley said. “You have the prized item that everybody wants.”
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