By I’m not here to talk about a particular brand or a particular lineage, but as a journalist, I’m tasked with telling the truth and telling the truth. Recent California lek cannabis market.
We’ve all heard news stories and excruciating grumblings from corporate cannabis CEOs about the legal market’s inability to compete with the traditional market, but past the press releases and backpaths, the cannabis industry’s Everyone should ask what exactly is keeping really good weed from becoming widely available on legal shelves?
To find the answer to that question, we enlisted the help of cannabis staples from California and the Emerald Triangle. Sourwaves is a longtime grower and meme creator. Over the years he has lived his infamous life keeping his feet on the neck of the industry when it comes to cultivation practices and quality.
John Casali of Huckleberry Hill Farms has grown and lived in the same valley of the Emerald Triangle all his life. Heritage Hash Co. Finally, Robert Gale’s Humboldt Terp Council Produces some of the best concentrates I have ever had the pleasure of dabbing and is a vocal member of the Humboldt County community regarding the state of the industry and the state of cannabis in general.
After extensive conversations with the aforementioned person, I have summarized the most likely causes of Masbeuf into the following three explanations.
- Excessive bureaucracy/taxes
- Shrinking Corporate Profit Margins/Market Manipulation
- general lack of growth experience
Uncle Boeuf Smoking Sam
Nearly every state sets cannabis laws in line with the tone of the “pay-to-play” market, or lack of foresight on license caps or canopy space maximums, or both The method has been objectively unsuccessful.
“Basically, overproduction and overtaxation create a race to the bottom and everyone loses,” Gale said. It takes so long to complete packaging, testing, that unless it’s vertically integrated, the weeds will already be old by the time they’re on the shelf.”
Testing is a beast of its own burden. Every legal state requires his THC test in one way or another, but there is little to no guidance as to exactly how that process should be done.
“There is no set calibration for testing. Second, you can buy the test results,” Sourwaves said, citing the lack of regulation over how California labs perform their tests. “You’ll pay more than the next lab, but that’s why labs are so popular. Say, ‘Oh, he’s over 30% THC,’ and fly things off the shelf.” There are little tricks people do to make their tests hot. For example, super dry, super dry, etc. ”
In addition to overproduction and overtaxation, many cannabis industry business owners lament that over-regulation of how cannabis businesses operate is causing industry stagnation and unnecessary financial backlogs.
“One of our biggest hurdles is having to donate. [our cannabis] To distributors who receive 17% and do not prepay us. Then they give it to retailers who don’t pay distributors who don’t pay us. And if the customer doesn’t buy the product or it takes a year to pay the retailer, it will take him a year to pay the distributor and in return it will take him a year to pay the farmer. ’” he says Casali. “more [often] Most of us farmers don’t get paid in many cases. ”
Revenge of Chads at Rec Markets
The jury is out: Big money is growing too much weed for its own good. Of all the people I’ve spoken to about cannabis throughout my life, scale is the biggest driver of boeuf production. It’s also a very effective tool if you’re a really wealthy guy who likes to be shot.
This mindset has led to market manipulation and the ousting of legacy operators by large growth companies, some of which (if not informally) removed the one-acre cap on cultivation licenses. It has been accused of pressuring and lobbying politicians for unsound economic gains. For example, it generally makes it easier for people to enter the industry and weed out those with less capital.
“If a person has an acre of field, that’s just the basic economics of why it costs less to produce a pound of weed for a larger person,” says Sourwaves. increase. “So the Glass House thug was probably costing us $30 to $60 a pound, so if we need to crash the market, we’re selling packs for $150 to $250. That’s Because they know these small farms can’t keep up with these low prices.”
For someone like Kasari who cultivates 5,000 square feet of canopy and hand-waters it with his girlfriend/partner, it’s virtually impossible to compete with the margins set by some of the larger operators. is. That’s enough to save consumers an extra $20-$40 per eighth they would have spent on something worth smoking in the face of decent cheap options. to produce.
“Growing in the Emerald Triangle costs a lot more to produce a pound. ‘ says Casali.
“There are people who are in just to make money, but this is America. I am not against making money. The problem is that weed sucks, right? Can we make it better?” Sourwaves said.
No one I’ve spoken to has a strict “too big to sit still” standard for the number of plants or lights. But it created a perfect silly storm.
“There are a few people doing it, but very few of them. I think places like Fig Farms have maintained quality and grown slowly,” Gale said. “Well, quality is hard to scale. Most of what we consider quality is no match for what people still produce in traditional markets.”
No love for plants, no knowledge of plants
As a weed geek, I have never met a grower who doesn’t love their plants or who is worth sacrificing so much time and effort for them. It might be the hippie mumbo-jumbo you picked up when you were a kid, but if all the great producers on the planet say the same thing, it’s very likely they know what they’re talking about. , they all emphasize it. Learning how to grow may be easier than ever, but you need to put in 10,000 hours to be able to consistently produce the best representation of your plants.
One of the things Sourwaves emphasized to me was that with respect to cultivation techniques, which they believed would lead to poor quality, large-scale indoor cultivation, which they believed could be incrementally improved by introducing organic nutrients in addition to synthetics. A high-intensity, complete synthetic nutrient cycle for
“If you’re feeding super-high EC several times a day, you’re using a sensor to measure your dry back, so you’re forcing that plant to get all those nutrients, and how do you measure that?” And it also tells you what you need to give, crap.Access to that information is very dope, don’t get me wrong.
The lack of experience and lack of love for plants seems to permeate all parts of the industry, not just growers.
“Even in 2018 and 2019, I worked at a pharmacy because I loved weed and wanted to be close to it.” We have a lot of staff applying to different locations in the pharmacy that happened to call them instead of Subway or Shoe Store or Orange. Julius.”
Does Mother Nature simply have a failsafe that doesn’t allow her to be taken advantage of by those who don’t show her the love she deserves, or is this more mumbo and jumbo? Many producers firmly believe that hard work will pay off.
“Most of our parents were part of the Back to Land movement. They taught us that taking care of the environment and the land is just as important. The time, energy and love you put into all kinds of plants, whether wax or grapes.The more time, the more energy and the more love you give to vegetables and cannabis, the better the end result. increase.
An obnoxious journalist, who has been taught not to ask rhetorical questions, asked what to do about these things. In a nutshell:
- We will remove excise taxes and all red tape between producers and consumers so that small producers can earn a living.
- We put a reasonable cap on license size and/or number of active licenses so Chad can still play, but not ruin it for everyone else.
- Anyone growing cannabis for a living needs to learn how to grow it.
- Respect the plants and they will respect you.
