“I came to this plant through church. Not as a metaphor. Literally. From birth.”
Chapter one
The Roots
Most people come to cannabis through a headline. A friend who swears by it. A desperation born of a pain that nothing else has touched.
The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church traces its origins to Ethiopia, its stories and traditions carried forward generation to generation by the original priests who boarded the slave ships to shepherd their people through the worst of human history. The church was formally recognized in Jamaica in the 1970s. Its principles are rooted in traditional Judaic-Christian faith woven together with the foundational belief that cannabis is an essential part of life. For our family, it was not background or heritage. It was everything.
I am the oldest of seven children. Our lives were shaped and significantly upended by who we were and what we believed. That background brought us persecution. It brought us the breaking apart of our community structure. And it brought us something else: a knowledge of this plant that runs deeper than any laboratory, any certification, or any trend.
In our home, cannabis was not a product. It was communion. It was part of prayer. It was food and medicine and daily life. We believe in natural earth remedies: the same kinds of remedies that have shaped medicine for generations. The difference is that you cannot patent what God made.
“I was twelve years old when I made a conscious choice. The thing they were describing as dangerous was the very thing I had watched heal our family my entire life.”
My peers had started talking about cannabis as this scary, dangerous, prohibited thing. And I realized, with a clarity I still feel today, that they had been told lies. Lies repeated so long they had become assumed truth.
I went home, found my father’s stash, and attempted to roll my first joint. It was ugly. At least three papers thick. But it worked. And the confounding thing was that I felt nothing unusual. I felt calm. I felt normal. Because this was always normal to me.
That day I made a deliberate decision: my relationship with this plant, with God, and with myself was something I would honor for the rest of my life.
Chapter two
The Calling
My father was born into wealth and privilege, a life with every door open, political ambitions, a future that most people could only imagine. He attended Cranbrook boarding school, where his roommate was Mitt Romney. But something happened on a trip to Jamaica. He encountered the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church and it changed everything. He joined. He became a Priest. He gave his life to it.
He is documented in Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja, a film that documents three of the largest cannabis operations in American history, including the church’s efforts to transport cannabis to the United States to fund farmland and businesses designed to lift the impoverished people of Jamaica. He went to prison for transporting two hundred tons of cannabis.
I used to feel ashamed of that. I never told anyone growing up. But as I became a man, something shifted. I realized there was nothing to be ashamed of. I am proud of my father. Proud of his courage. Proud of what he stood for long before the world was ready to listen.
“Before Colorado. Before the farm. Before any of it, I spent years traveling not as a tourist, but as a student.”
I spent months in Amsterdam studying cultivation. I climbed into the mountains of Swaziland in search of native varieties. I lived in Jamaica on and off for years throughout my life, and still have people there I call family.
I was searching for the cultures around the world that had used this plant throughout history. Not to write a thesis. To know.
What I came away with was not a collection of facts. It was a conviction: cannabis has been part of human culture and civilization since the beginning. It is not a trend. It is not a supplement category. It is a gift from the earth, by design, for us.
Chapter Three
The Vow
Cancer. We had no money. He had no insurance. The hospital told me they could treat him if I paid out of pocket. I had nothing to give them.
I researched everything I could find. Alternative treatments. Natural remedies. I came across the Rick Simpson story and his oil and it resonated with every ancient thing I already knew. But I was living in Tennessee. Cannabis was illegal. I could not get enough quality raw flower to make what he needed. I bought what I could. Made it in my backyard. It was not enough. It was not good enough. And my father passed.
My father was born wealthy and died penniless. One of his last breaths, he told me he was sorry he had nothing to leave me.
To this day, I still feel we could have made a difference.
“Your inheritance is from God. It is Ganja. And your charge is to give it to the people.”
From that day forward, my entire life became one unbroken line: give it to the people.
Chapter Four
The Mission. Colorado, Willie’s Reserve, the Farm, Florida.
Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational cannabis. It was the epicenter, the best and brightest in cannabis converging on one place to build an industry that had never been built before. Not just growing cannabis — a mature industry. Everything from marketing, growing, tracking, compliance, and sales. We were establishing it from the ground up, with regulations changing under our feet and no precedent for anything.
I started at TrenchTown in Denver. One of the owners had seen Square Grouper. I came in as a grow technician and worked my way to management. That is where I truly learned the difference between someone who can grow cannabis and someone who can grow it at scale, with consistency, with quality, under commercial pressure, week after week without fail.
Then Yolanda introduced me to the ownership at one of Willie’s Reserve select grows. Yes, Willie Nelson’s cannabis brand. They brought my brother Luke on too. Together we stabilized the operation, improved consistency and potency, and introduced new varieties. I served as Director of Cultivation at a Willie’s Reserve select grow.
“I believe the plant senses your spirit. Literally. A part of you goes into what you grow.”
The Farm-Illinois
In 2018 the Farm Bill passed and hemp became federally legal. Yolanda and I had been building other people’s businesses for years. We decided to build something built on our values. Not someone else’s.
My mother is from central Illinois. Her brother, my uncle from Peoria, had fallow farmland and told me to use it. Banner, Illinois is the name of the town where that farm sits. The word banner means excellent, as in a banner crop. Banner Harvest was born.
We started all the seeds under grow lights in an old restaurant building. My whole future sat under those lights. Thousands of seedlings I had to raise like children, hardening them to the sun by moving them outdoors and back inside by hand every single day for weeks.
Then came planting 15,000 by hand, in the field, one by one, alongside the people I love: Yolanda, my mother Vicki, and my brother Luke.
It was one of the most physically demanding things I have ever done. It was also one of the proudest moments of my life.
I know my father would also be very proud of us.
Florida
I was born near Ocala, Florida, about thirty miles from Leesburg. When we arrived, the biggest surprise was how many people had never tried CBD at all. Or had tried something mass-produced and low-quality that did nothing, and had written the whole thing off.
It reminded me why we exist. The real thing is rare. Most people have never experienced it.
Chapter Five
Who I Am Now
I am nearly 50 years old. I stay active, clear, and fairly grounded. This plant has supported all of it.
We make everything in-house because freshness is not a marketing claim, it is efficacy. Mass-produced oil sitting in a warehouse for months does not do this plant justice. It does not do you justice. Every product that leaves our hands is made with the same intention I bring to everything: this plant deserves respect, and so do the people who use it.
Full panel testing- potency, pesticides, heavy metals, microbials, residual solvents-has been our standard since the beginning. That was the standard I lived under in the Colorado medical marijuana industry. We built it in from day one. For us it has never been negotiable.
Banner Harvest exists because people need it. Even the ones who do not realize it yet.
Paul ImOberstag
Co-Founder, Banner Harvest LLC
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