He grew up farming everything in South Africa, then went corporate. Now he spends three quarters of the year on the road, and his only hobby is walking around cities watching people.
Before cannabis, Wesley Petzer bred chickens for competition.
"I used to breed chickens at one stage to show poultry for competitions."
It is offered in a list, not as a boast. He grew up farming in South Africa and the list is long: cattle, sheep, goats, some beekeeping. Dairy, which he does not recommend.
"No one likes getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning, every day, day in, day out."
He introduces himself the same way every time.
"I am Wes. I think I introduced myself to a lot of people just for the fun of it, but I'm just a farmer. That's my background."
He studied agriculture and then did not go into it.
"I never got into agriculture. I went and worked corporate. Job's a job."
The cannabis came out of the gap that left.
"I got bored, so I started growing cannabis in the first place, working corporates. And I started growing weed at home. I could buy genetics, I could do these things as a side hobby. And in 2018, South Africa, you were legally allowed to cultivate at home. So I purely did it for the fun of it."
He is precise about what happened next, and it was not ambition.
"It was the most interesting thing I've ever had a chance to grow. And that just went from that. It started spiraling."
He has a theory about the people he now meets doing the same job.
"It's interesting, it's bright and shiny, and like a lot of people that I've now met in this industry is we all have severe ADHD. And it's just certain things that you can't say no to, because they're just too much fun or too interesting."
He applies it to himself without softening it.
"It's the mental stimulation across all of it, as any ADHD kid would say. This lights up parts of your brain at the same time across the board in so many different ways that it is addictive. Sometimes a little less of a driving factor and more of a chasing after. Is it bad? Maybe. Is it fun? Absolutely."
He now travels for Atami, a Dutch plant nutrition company, meeting growers and distributors. He has stopped counting the days.
"I'm pretty sure by the end of this year I would have spent close to three quarters of the year on the road, or away, or recovering from traveling. I think that's actually the bigger one. The traveling is fine. It's the after effects."
One year's itinerary, as he lists it: South Africa, Spain, Australia, Germany. Then Canada, then Australia again, Thailand and the United States to finish.
He does not present this as glamour.
"Up until now it's been hard. It's been a massive drain."
The thing that has started to help is not rest.
"The one thing that has definitely helped finding the energy is absorbing it from the community around you. Because there's a lot of people that are going through the exact same thing. It is hard across the board."
The rest is ordinary and unfinished.
"I am starting to start going towards eating better and trying to get sleep in on a routine. Because you're going so hard, you kind of running at a deficit."
"There's nothing better than the feeling of your own bed at home and your own pillow."
He came into the industry expecting to find something older than it is.
"I, for some reason, had romanticized this, that this industry was bigger, more established."
A year of back-to-back events corrected him.
"I realized it's not only smaller than I thought it was, I already knew more people than I thought I knew. I was just getting to know them differently now."
He does not think anyone is coming to run it.
"You don't have the old OGs that used to just do everything. I don't think we're ever going to find someone that knows everything that can lead us in a way. We're past that point. Because there's just too much to do, and no one person, I think, can pull that off in this industry."
What he wants instead is narrower and more practical.
"Breaking it down into mentorships across different areas of the industry. Certain skills from certain people, traits that people have brought with them into the industry. They can mentor you in that niche little thing because they're really good at it."
The people he means came from somewhere else. Software engineers. Marketers. People who came out of social media.
He met three YouTubers the day before this interview and asked all of them the same thing.
"All of them agreed that they never used to like cannabis when they're in high school. And like, this is what you guys do as a job now."
He finds that pattern more reassuring than the alternative.
"These accidental ones are by far the best. To know that they're not common."
The reason he stays is the same reason he thinks the accidental route works.
"Just because the rules haven't been written yet. There's no hierarchy. There's nothing to say that because you've been in this industry for 40 years, you know everything."
He thinks the people arriving now are better than the people who were here first.
"We have new people entering the market that are more highly skilled than have ever been before, coming out with PhDs in cannabis specific research that are ready for the market. They are the top benchmark. And I like that, because where else in the world do you get a level playing field that doesn't matter on age, race, sex, across the board."
Asked what is holding the industry back, he answers in one word.
"Egos. Everyone just needs to get over themselves. If everyone gets over themselves, we can move forward."
He describes the shape of the problem as geography.
"Everyone's in these little islands. There is more side groups than anything else that I could ever get to that just aren't part of the conversation. And everyone just thinks the greatest things about themselves, and it stops them from talking to others."
Then, immediately, about himself.
"No one knows everything in this game. I've learned probably about ten different things just this afternoon."
He went to a horticulture trade show recently and was surprised by what it did to him.
"It was refreshing to be reminded that there is a world outside of cannabis that exists. I met other high level qualified agricultural specialists, which is my background. In study, everything was supposed to lead that channel and it never did."
He is clear about why he did not stay there.
"The rest of the agriculture industry was kind of boring. It's super corporate. It's methodical. It doesn't have a lively new energy."
He admits the count.
"I probably would have tried to leave at least three times."
He has one hobby now and he knows how it sounds.
"My favorite thing now to do in my spare time is walk around the city. I do a lot of walking, just to relax. Go look at people and interact with society."
He connects it, without being asked, to what he lost.
"That's just from where I came from. I guess it's something I never really got to truly enjoy."
Then he apologises for it.
"Weird hobby, but it's the only one I got for now."
South Africa is still home, though he widens the word when he says it.
"I grew up wild, I grew up free in farming, and I had the best childhood in what was proper Africa. And I think what's nice about that is that expands to a lot more places than just South Africa. And that I do miss."
Asked what he is most grateful for, he does not name a place or a person.
"It's the ability to know that the effort I put in will work out. My future's in my control. And I guess that's having hope at the moment, and enjoying that. That's a really nice feeling."
The last thing he says is a farmer's answer to a question about business.
"If you want to, as someone who can't sit still, that can't go a minute without getting twitchy or fidgety — go stare at a patch of grass in the Bushveld. There's a lot happening. It's all interconnected. It all works, and they all feed each other."
Video portrait coming soon / EN edition