[HN Gopher] How the marijuana 'green rush' fell apart
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How the marijuana 'green rush' fell apart
Author : pseudolus
Score : 23 points
Date : 2023-01-02 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| alexose wrote:
| I live on the Oregon/California border, where a lot of growers
| spilled over from Humboldt County and elsewhere. I've seen a few
| ups and downs in the market, but nothing like what happened over
| the last two years. There was a moment in 2020 when more acres of
| weed were being grown than _alfalfa_. Neighbors were signing
| multi-year contracts to rent out their water rights. And oh, all
| of the terrible behavior that the rush brought with it. So much
| plastic, everywhere.
|
| And just like that, it's gone. All the big-money growers went to
| Oklahoma, and only a few remain. Which, I guess makes sense. The
| only reason they were here in the first place was because of the
| regulatory environment-- Not because land is particularly cheap
| or water particularly abundant.
|
| I'm in the wine world, so I suppose I have some sour grapes, so
| to speak. In the boom times, a single cannabis plant could throw
| off $500 worth of product. Plus, the indoor grows were usually
| doing multiple harvests per year. Whereas my plant takes half a
| decade to establish, then produces $10 of fruit in a good year.
| flutas wrote:
| > All the big-money growers went to Oklahoma
|
| So accurate. Also a lot of foreign money in pot farms in OK...
| sometimes leading to essentially slavery on the farms resulting
| in the deaths of workers.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-demanded-300k-killi...
| dmix wrote:
| Is there any other markets that the same hydroponic equipment
| could be used for that's profitable?
|
| Or maybe just the greenhouses and gardening equipment, since
| hydroponic has a limited set of vegetables/plants that it can
| grow.
| greazy wrote:
| This reminds me of the strawberry growers here in Australia, QLD.
| Many farmers switched to strawberries and the market was flooded
| for one season. They were literally selling them by the kilo when
| previously punnets (250g) were 3-5 dollars each.
|
| Lots of farmers switched to other more stable crops. The big
| players stayed and the small farmers producing high quality fruit
| continued.
|
| The market stabilizing. Interesting times.
| atentaten wrote:
| Off topic. I've been appalled at how tasteless store-bought
| strawberries in the U.S. have become. I don't know happened, a
| change in cultivar? 12 years ago I could buy flavorful
| strawberries in the U.S., today I cannot. I hope they have more
| flavor in AU.
| jspash wrote:
| If you have the money, take a trip to Japan and you can try
| the best strawberries in the world. Only $500 each!
|
| https://strawberryplants.org/japanese-strawberry-growing-
| sec...
| latchkey wrote:
| I spent about 4 years actively growing weed before it was
| "legal." in San Francisco.
|
| Because mine was indoor/soil/organic and didn't require driving
| up to Ukiah or waiting for the outdoor harvests, I got the same
| premium rates for it that are noted in the article.
|
| As soon as I realized that weed was eventually going legal, I
| stopped entirely because I could see the writing on the wall. It
| was becoming commoditized to the point where it was impossible to
| compete. Too much money was being thrown at it.
|
| Articles like this are zero surprise.
| a2tech wrote:
| In Michigan now that its legal the prices have plummeted. I
| just saw a place advertising $100 for 2 full ounces for new
| recreation customers. Thats an insane deal. I'm sure its not
| the best stuff but its a shocking amount.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I remember reading something years back that applying modern
| large scale ag technology to cannabis was never a technical
| hurdle, merely a legal one, and how much cheaper it would be
| once the well-capitalized giants got ahold of it and came to
| pretty much the same conclusion. It did make for a neat trip
| through Colorado in 2017 when it was still pretty novel though.
| flybrand wrote:
| Crops have a shelf life and a consumption window - they are
| perishable. There's enormous investment going on in technologies
| to enhance the storage of downstream products. That will pay off,
| in the same way that the excess crops of the Ohio valley were
| profitable once they could be converted to alcohol. Today's glut
| is an abundance of raw material that indicates demand for some
| method to store the product longer.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| Isn't the oils and extracts that solution for the long term
| storage? What's missing?
| flutas wrote:
| > Isn't the oils and extracts that solution for the long term
| storage?
|
| Yep, and you will see distillate used for things like
| edibles/drinks/vapes.
|
| This has two problems (in my mind), but both the same
| cause...consumers are picky.
|
| First issue is most states require the date of extraction to
| be listed on the product packaging. If they see a really old
| date, they get sketchy about it. (ex: I have recently got
| some R&D stuff from a grow, and the extraction date was
| listed as February 2022 and that set off alarm bells in my
| head, even though it's perfectly fine like you mentioned.)
|
| The second is a group of issues in consumers minds and they
| are all closely related. Distillate doesn't have all the
| terpenes the other forms do (and therefore removes the
| 'strain specific' effects that some go after), so you lose
| out on the entourage effect[0]. Some grows will start re-
| adding the terpenes to distillate using cheaper plant based
| (tree in some cases) terpenes and again, people are picky and
| this turns them off of the product.
|
| [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165946/
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Bad for small businesses, but potentially good for purchasers
| (i.e. low prices). Unfortunate for those looking to get rich, but
| legal weed is essentially farming, and no one thinks of farming
| as easy money. It's like starting your own brewery or
| vineyard/winery. They are commodity products, not huge
| moneymakers.
| mseri wrote:
| Without paywall at https://archive.ph/8aj7W
| rippercushions wrote:
| The cannabis boom seems to have been predicated largely on the
| assumption that it would resemble the high-end wine market, with
| expensive vintages, "budtenders", etc that can support lots of
| boutique farms and retailers.
|
| But it looks more like the future will resemble the tobacco
| industry, with slim profit margins and a handful of conglomerates
| controlling production. And in reality, for wine as well, LVMH
| owns many of the most famous upmarket brands and and most wine
| drinkers stick to the bottom-shelf industrially produced bulk
| stuff that wholesales for $1/litre.
| sudosteph wrote:
| I'd be interested to know if the new market for "full spectrum
| hemp" in non-decriminalized states is also affecting the legal
| growers. Here in NC, you can go into stores all over the state
| and buy thc edibles for a very reasonable price. And I'm not even
| talking about the delta-8 stuff that was popular for a while
| (though that's around too). Basically a farm bill loophole has
| made it so that processing low-thc hemp and selling products made
| from that is very profitable, and it doesn't have the same tax
| burden of legal weed. Even real flower is available through a
| different loophole, and you can go to dab bars in cities like
| Nashville and buy concentrate from that loophole bud. I could see
| people who would otherwise travel across state lines for
| reputable product preferring the loophole stuff due to
| convenience and price.
| standardUser wrote:
| I was in NC recently and totally baffled by the selection and
| availability of different cannabis products. I'm still not sure
| what I was buying/smoking half the time, but I mostly enjoyed
| it.
|
| Here in NY, we have a different kind of "gray market" that has
| been filling the vacuum created by a lack of legally sanctioned
| stores. It started as weed vans all over the city (selling
| products of questionable quality) and then it was bodegas and
| smoke shops selling flowers and prerolls on every street
| corner. Now we have full-blown recreational shops with bright
| lights and branded packaging selling nothing but weed 24/7, and
| they are completely illegal.
|
| The first legal stores finally opened up a few days ago.
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