diff --git a/docs/source/installation.rst b/docs/source/installation.rst
index 7311cf59..991a80c5 100644
--- a/docs/source/installation.rst
+++ b/docs/source/installation.rst
@@ -12,3 +12,14 @@ or from a conda environment
 ::
 
     conda install datajudge -c conda-forge
+
+
+
+Snowflake
+^^^^
+
+If your backend is ``snowflake`` and you are querying large datasets,
+you can additionally install ``pandas`` to make use of very fast query loading
+(up to 50x speedup for large datasets).
+    Note: The ``pandas`` requirement is a bug in the snowflake-python-connector
+    and, hopefully, it will not be needed in the future.
diff --git a/environment.yml b/environment.yml
index 168d7c83..74816782 100644
--- a/environment.yml
+++ b/environment.yml
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ channels:
   - conda-forge
   - nodefaults
 dependencies:
+  - pandas
   - python>=3.8
   - pytest
   - pytest-cov
diff --git a/src/datajudge/db_access.py b/src/datajudge/db_access.py
index a766f8f1..9346c3f8 100644
--- a/src/datajudge/db_access.py
+++ b/src/datajudge/db_access.py
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 import functools
 import json
 import operator
+import warnings
 from abc import ABC, abstractmethod
 from collections import Counter
 from dataclasses import dataclass
@@ -11,6 +12,17 @@
 import sqlalchemy as sa
 from sqlalchemy.sql.expression import FromClause
 
+from .utils import check_module_installed
+
+snowflake_available = check_module_installed("snowflake")
+pandas_available = check_module_installed("pandas")
+
+
+if snowflake_available and not pandas_available:
+    warnings.warn(
+        "For snowflake users: `pandas` is not installed, that means optimized data loading is not available."
+    )
+
 
 def is_mssql(engine: sa.engine.Engine) -> bool:
     return engine.name == "mssql"
@@ -648,7 +660,20 @@ def get_column(
 
     if not aggregate_operator:
         selection = sa.select([column])
-        result = engine.connect().execute(selection).scalars().all()
+
+        # snowflake-specific optimization iff pandas is installed
+        if is_snowflake(engine) and pandas_available:
+            snowflake_cursor = engine.connect().connection.cursor()
+
+            # note: in addition to pyarrow, this currently requires pandas as well
+            pa_table = snowflake_cursor.execute(str(selection)).fetch_arrow_all()
+            if pa_table:  # snowflake connector returns NoneType when the table is empty
+                result = pa_table.column(0).to_numpy()
+            else:
+                result = []
+
+        else:
+            result = engine.connect().execute(selection).scalars().all()
 
     else:
         selection = sa.select([aggregate_operator(column)])
diff --git a/src/datajudge/utils.py b/src/datajudge/utils.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..b9da85c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/datajudge/utils.py
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+def check_module_installed(module_name: str) -> bool:
+    import importlib
+
+    try:
+        importlib.import_module(module_name)
+        return True
+    except ModuleNotFoundError:
+        return False