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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, bu

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 4y ago
> 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-killing-4-chinese-nationals-oklahoma-pot-farm-prosec-rcna60096 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-demanded-300k-killi...
- alexose 4y ago
  Unfortunately, I can tell you exactly how it's going to go in Oklahoma as well. Not great.
asdff 4y ago
You can get a lot more than $500 off a single plant. Outdoors grown right into the soil, you could get a pound or more off a single humongous plant, and in California with a medical card you can have 12 of these plants growing at once. Even a small indoor tent grown plant is good for like 5-6 oz or more 3-5 months from start to harvest. Genetics are great these days for seeds and clones. Imagine parting that out for $200 oz or better yet the $30 a gram metric the cops use when they weigh their busts.
- dmurray 4y ago
  You can get $5000 or a lot more for a single bottle (~1 plant) of wine, too. But if you're growing acres of either crop you aren't making those numbers reliably.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Is your bottle of wine ready for market in 6 months or less from when you plant your vineyard? Probably not though. The speed at which you can get these yields is another huge advantage for these crops. Some commercial growers are having new plants grow up to harvest continuously, with separate rooms for vegetative growing, flowering, and even maintaining a genetic library of clones fit for expanding and out planting in your greenhouse. You can also grow this crop anywhere in the world, unlike grapevine.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      You have to have 3 rooms, otherwise you're buying clones, which is stupid expensive, when you can just take cuttings and make your own super easy. The two precursor rooms don't require nearly as much space or power though.
- pests 4y ago
  If you are still paying $200 (retail) for an OZ you are getting scammed.
- loeg 4y ago
  You think bulk growers are making significantly more than $500 a lb? $30/g was fictional even before legalization.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    I've been out of the game for a little bit, but bulk rates for black market weed was about $1000/lb a few years after legalization in CO.
DonHopkins 4y ago
>I'm in the wine world, so I suppose I have some sour grapes, so to speak. [...] $10 of fruit in a good year. Even if the demand for grapes dries up and withers on the vine, at least you won't have a problem raisin money.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  Did you hear about the viticulturalist whose crop was lost in a drought? He said his whole reason for being was to pay off his raisin debt. (I'm still workshopping this one.)
  - seejayseesjays 4y ago
    Howsabout "He said his whole reason for being was raisin money to pay his debts"? Though the punchline is similar to the previous comment, if you're trying to avoid that.
  - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
    "He said paying off debts was his only raisin d'être"
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Oh I heard it through the grape vine, oh and I'm just about to lose my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UShiwymsX0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UShiwymsX0w Raised in that California sunshine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqMmIqA_Ak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqMmIqA_Ak Huh? Wow. Must have been something I ate...
encryptluks2 4y ago
Wait, why in the world would they go to Oklahoma to grow? That is like asking for trouble from the law.
- manicennui 4y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/oklahoma-marijuana-boom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/oklahoma-marijuana-boo...
  - bpanon 4y ago
    Anyone know how to circumvent the paywall on these links on ios?
    - jahlove 4y ago
      Brave browser with JS disabled
    - woleium 4y ago
      archive.is or one of the "web archives" plugins that use it
    - password4321 4y ago
      Paste the URL in at archive.today: https://archive.ph/DFh3y https://archive.ph/DFh3y
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    It's funny that marijuana advocates wasted decades pleading their case under the guise of personal freedom, social equity, compassionate use, and the like. Turns out all it took to convince the right was showing them the money.
    - binvlad 4y ago
      Is that more of a "hahaha" funny or a "my head feels funny" funny?
sammalloy 4y ago
> Plus, the indoor grows we’re usually doing multiple harvests a year. Maximum of four, and if you have it staggered in multiple grow environments, then you’re doing 12, one every month.
bogomipz 4y ago
>"Whereas my plant takes half a decade to establish, then produces $10 of fruit in a good year." I would be interested in hearing more detail about the economics of the $10. Is this price you get from selling your grapes to someone else or is the net from selling the wine that you produce from your plants?
- spydum 4y ago
  also involved the winemaking and vineyard biz (east coast us). i think that estimate is on the lower end, but also per season (single harvest per year). while the vines do take 5 years to really start producing, they will continue to produce for decades after, with a cyclical nature of peaks and valleys approx every 5 years. $10/per plant seems very low, even if selling only as u-pick. also highly depends on your spacing and grape type. for us in the south east, muscadine grapes are enormous and a single plant with a 12' spread can produce quite a lot per plant at its peak, easily 80lbs of grapes in one season. wine is approx 15-20lbs grapes per gallon from that.
- alexose 4y ago
  Well, I don't make my living off of growing grapes. I just do that part for fun. So my napkin math is basically $1.50 per pound, which is on the low end of what I pay when I buy them from a vineyard. Real grape growers are looking to maximize dollar per acre. There's a lot that goes into it if you're trying to turn a profit. But at the end of the day it's about keeping the yield high and the input costs (especially labor) low.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mind-blight 4y ago
I grew up in Ashland (visiting there right now, in fact) and have family who funded one of the first marijuana companies in the state. Some problems were bad behavior from legal growers, but I'd argue the bigger problems were caused by regulatory and oversight failures from OLCC and enforcement of existing laws on illegal grow operations. 1) OLCC allowed for way too many grow license at first. For a state of 4.3 million, you have a serious upper bound to how much the legal market can support. There was some discussion about weed tourism, and a bit of work to allow legal interstate sales between Washington and California, but nothing really materialized. 2) A plant could produce $500+ in product, but it cost tens of thousands of dollars per acre just to get your plants in the ground. That's not including harvesting, drying, trimming, and storage. Given that there's no crop insurance, if anything goes wrong you're easily a couple hundred thousand in the hole. 3) OLCC often added regulations mid-grow, after it was impossible to effectively respond. This included things such as dropping the batch size for a test (which costs hundreds of dollars per run) down to 10lbs per batch. This sort of uncertainty, the oversupply of licenses, and the huge up getting operational costs made it financially impossible for a lot of farms to break even. I don't condone it, but I do understand why a lot of folks under reported yield and sold part of their harvest in other states. 4) A lot of the truly bad actors we're organized crime rings moving in (Russian mob and Yakuza from what I heard). They got a hemp license and grew marijuana illegally (usually having a few hemp plants in case a state tester came to the grow site). Local law enforcement knew about it, but they were literally out manned and out gunned. The feds eventually offered support, but it took a while. Folks understandably freaked out, but OLCC mainly used the mob as a pretense to try to wrestle hemp regulation away from the ODA (which they have been trying to do for years) rather than acknowledge that this was an enforcement problem, not a regulatory problem.
- jefftk 4y ago
  On (1) I'm don't see how limiting the number of growers was, or should have been, within OLCC's role. When governments try to match supply to demand this way it generally goes very poorly in the best case (ex: certificate of need requirements for opening hospitals, federal marketing orders limiting production) and runs into regulatory capture in the worst case (ex: increasing the entry requirements for professions to boost wages). The people best included to make good decisions on how much to produce were the growers and their investors, with their own time and money on the line.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
As long as regulation and taxes are a dominant cost in the weed industry it will remain volatile. Some state is gonna come along and tax it slightly less than Oklahoma and everyone will go there. Wash, rinse repeat among the 30-something states that are sufficiently arable for weed until the taxation is a low enough fraction of the overall cost that other factors (water cost, growing season, etc) dominate.

flutas 4y ago

> 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-killing-4-chinese-nationals-oklahoma-pot-farm-prosec-rcna60096 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-demanded-300k-killi...

alexose 4y ago
Unfortunately, I can tell you exactly how it's going to go in Oklahoma as well. Not great.

asdff 4y ago

You can get a lot more than $500 off a single plant. Outdoors grown right into the soil, you could get a pound or more off a single humongous plant, and in California with a medical card you can have 12 of these plants growing at once. Even a small indoor tent grown plant is good for like 5-6 oz or more 3-5 months from start to harvest. Genetics are great these days for seeds and clones. Imagine parting that out for $200 oz or better yet the $30 a gram metric the cops use when they weigh their busts.

dmurray 4y ago
You can get $5000 or a lot more for a single bottle (~1 plant) of wine, too. But if you're growing acres of either crop you aren't making those numbers reliably.
- asdff 4y ago
  Is your bottle of wine ready for market in 6 months or less from when you plant your vineyard? Probably not though. The speed at which you can get these yields is another huge advantage for these crops. Some commercial growers are having new plants grow up to harvest continuously, with separate rooms for vegetative growing, flowering, and even maintaining a genetic library of clones fit for expanding and out planting in your greenhouse. You can also grow this crop anywhere in the world, unlike grapevine.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    You have to have 3 rooms, otherwise you're buying clones, which is stupid expensive, when you can just take cuttings and make your own super easy. The two precursor rooms don't require nearly as much space or power though.
pests 4y ago
If you are still paying $200 (retail) for an OZ you are getting scammed.
loeg 4y ago
You think bulk growers are making significantly more than $500 a lb? $30/g was fictional even before legalization.
- monocasa 4y ago
  I've been out of the game for a little bit, but bulk rates for black market weed was about $1000/lb a few years after legalization in CO.

DonHopkins 4y ago

>I'm in the wine world, so I suppose I have some sour grapes, so to speak. [...] $10 of fruit in a good year. Even if the demand for grapes dries up and withers on the vine, at least you won't have a problem raisin money.

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
Did you hear about the viticulturalist whose crop was lost in a drought? He said his whole reason for being was to pay off his raisin debt. (I'm still workshopping this one.)
- seejayseesjays 4y ago
  Howsabout "He said his whole reason for being was raisin money to pay his debts"? Though the punchline is similar to the previous comment, if you're trying to avoid that.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  "He said paying off debts was his only raisin d'être"
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Oh I heard it through the grape vine, oh and I'm just about to lose my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UShiwymsX0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UShiwymsX0w Raised in that California sunshine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqMmIqA_Ak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqMmIqA_Ak Huh? Wow. Must have been something I ate...

encryptluks2 4y ago

Wait, why in the world would they go to Oklahoma to grow? That is like asking for trouble from the law.

manicennui 4y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/oklahoma-marijuana-boom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/oklahoma-marijuana-boo...
- bpanon 4y ago
  Anyone know how to circumvent the paywall on these links on ios?
  - jahlove 4y ago
    Brave browser with JS disabled
  - woleium 4y ago
    archive.is or one of the "web archives" plugins that use it
  - password4321 4y ago
    Paste the URL in at archive.today: https://archive.ph/DFh3y https://archive.ph/DFh3y
- ramesh31 4y ago
  It's funny that marijuana advocates wasted decades pleading their case under the guise of personal freedom, social equity, compassionate use, and the like. Turns out all it took to convince the right was showing them the money.
  - binvlad 4y ago
    Is that more of a "hahaha" funny or a "my head feels funny" funny?

sammalloy 4y ago

> Plus, the indoor grows we’re usually doing multiple harvests a year. Maximum of four, and if you have it staggered in multiple grow environments, then you’re doing 12, one every month.

bogomipz 4y ago

>"Whereas my plant takes half a decade to establish, then produces $10 of fruit in a good year." I would be interested in hearing more detail about the economics of the $10. Is this price you get from selling your grapes to someone else or is the net from selling the wine that you produce from your plants?

spydum 4y ago
also involved the winemaking and vineyard biz (east coast us). i think that estimate is on the lower end, but also per season (single harvest per year). while the vines do take 5 years to really start producing, they will continue to produce for decades after, with a cyclical nature of peaks and valleys approx every 5 years. $10/per plant seems very low, even if selling only as u-pick. also highly depends on your spacing and grape type. for us in the south east, muscadine grapes are enormous and a single plant with a 12' spread can produce quite a lot per plant at its peak, easily 80lbs of grapes in one season. wine is approx 15-20lbs grapes per gallon from that.
alexose 4y ago
Well, I don't make my living off of growing grapes. I just do that part for fun. So my napkin math is basically $1.50 per pound, which is on the low end of what I pay when I buy them from a vineyard. Real grape growers are looking to maximize dollar per acre. There's a lot that goes into it if you're trying to turn a profit. But at the end of the day it's about keeping the yield high and the input costs (especially labor) low.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mind-blight 4y ago

I grew up in Ashland (visiting there right now, in fact) and have family who funded one of the first marijuana companies in the state. Some problems were bad behavior from legal growers, but I'd argue the bigger problems were caused by regulatory and oversight failures from OLCC and enforcement of existing laws on illegal grow operations. 1) OLCC allowed for way too many grow license at first. For a state of 4.3 million, you have a serious upper bound to how much the legal market can support. There was some discussion about weed tourism, and a bit of work to allow legal interstate sales between Washington and California, but nothing really materialized. 2) A plant could produce $500+ in product, but it cost tens of thousands of dollars per acre just to get your plants in the ground. That's not including harvesting, drying, trimming, and storage. Given that there's no crop insurance, if anything goes wrong you're easily a couple hundred thousand in the hole. 3) OLCC often added regulations mid-grow, after it was impossible to effectively respond. This included things such as dropping the batch size for a test (which costs hundreds of dollars per run) down to 10lbs per batch. This sort of uncertainty, the oversupply of licenses, and the huge up getting operational costs made it financially impossible for a lot of farms to break even. I don't condone it, but I do understand why a lot of folks under reported yield and sold part of their harvest in other states. 4) A lot of the truly bad actors we're organized crime rings moving in (Russian mob and Yakuza from what I heard). They got a hemp license and grew marijuana illegally (usually having a few hemp plants in case a state tester came to the grow site). Local law enforcement knew about it, but they were literally out manned and out gunned. The feds eventually offered support, but it took a while. Folks understandably freaked out, but OLCC mainly used the mob as a pretense to try to wrestle hemp regulation away from the ODA (which they have been trying to do for years) rather than acknowledge that this was an enforcement problem, not a regulatory problem.

jefftk 4y ago
On (1) I'm don't see how limiting the number of growers was, or should have been, within OLCC's role. When governments try to match supply to demand this way it generally goes very poorly in the best case (ex: certificate of need requirements for opening hospitals, federal marketing orders limiting production) and runs into regulatory capture in the worst case (ex: increasing the entry requirements for professions to boost wages). The people best included to make good decisions on how much to produce were the growers and their investors, with their own time and money on the line.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

As long as regulation and taxes are a dominant cost in the weed industry it will remain volatile. Some state is gonna come along and tax it slightly less than Oklahoma and everyone will go there. Wash, rinse repeat among the 30-something states that are sufficiently arable for weed until the taxation is a low enough fraction of the overall cost that other factors (water cost, growing season, etc) dominate.