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How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#31

Post by metta2uall »

atentaten wrote: post #9
greazy wrote: post #2

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…

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.

Sadly the vast majority do not..

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#32

Post by metadat »

mturmon wrote: post #28
atentaten wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many varieties were replaced with the "Camarosa", which is now the default grocery-store berry. Here's an article from the change-over: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-21-mn-61072-... [edited to add: see also: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/interesting-chandler-strawberr... -- but there are a lot of astroturf pieces out there also] Camarosa ships well (high firmness), but the taste really isn't there.…

JS-free archive link: https://archive.ph/xdkfC

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#33

Post by asdff »

latchkey wrote: post #3

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…

I'm not sure what your operation was but I think there is still a market for your crop. There's plenty of weed in the dispensary, yes, but its taxed sometimes 30%. You get what you think is a cheap oz of weed but its in a sealed bag, and when you open it up it does the job sure according to THC % but its all that shake and larf and ugly stuff that comes from the trim bag and rock hard cure style of prep commercial growers do. There's a reason why the grey market remains so huge.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#34

Post by fleddr »

constantlm wrote: post #26
pixl97 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste. We'll buy a pint of massive, red, perfect looking berries that have zero flavor before we'll buy a smaller, dented berry that has the best flavor on the planet. Add to that the berries tend to be picked green and shipped long distances and you have the perfect maelstrom for the next 'red delicious' debacle.

Not sure why this was downvoted. Across the world it is absolutely the case that we optimise for shelf-life and appearance over taste. This becomes especially obvious when you grow your own tomatoes from seed.

I think it's actually even worse than that. You're suggesting that people accept a lesser taste in exchange for the other benefits. As if this is a conscious decision.

I think people don't really taste with any attention at all. They eat in a rush, preoccupied, and the ingredients may be mashed together into some mix. As long as something isn't incredibly off, they'll not consider it a "lesser" taste, this is just how a strawberry tastes.

...until you take the time to demonstrate the vastly superior taste.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#35

Post by asdff »

hotpotamus wrote: post #17
latchkey wrote: post #3

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…

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.

It actually is a technical hurdle because not a lot of academic research is being done on it for commercial growers to use. You see some papers out there that cover things like yield per light spectrum or what soil ammendments do for terpene content, but they all come out of Canada and specifically McGill. It's like U.S. researchers are blackballed by their institutions or maybe their grant funding agencies. As such, techniques like plant tissue culture that are commonly done with other crops and expensive ornamentals in the U.S. are rarely done with cannabis because growers that do these techniques are often tight lipped about things such as the most ideal media composition or really anything else related to methodology.

Meanwhile with crops such as corn, you have entire land grant universities planting test crops as we speak and biology departments dedicated to maize genetics, and thats true for almost every other large commercial crop. Billions are spent on research by the federal and state governments. Agriculture takes advantage of all of this research and development when producing commercial crops, but none of this investment is being made for cannabis and when it is done by these private companies they are not proliferating their findings.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

pixl97 wrote: post #23
atentaten wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste. We'll buy a pint of massive, red, perfect looking berries that have zero flavor before we'll buy a smaller, dented berry that has the best flavor on the planet. Add to that the berries tend to be picked green and shipped long distances and you have the perfect maelstrom for the next 'red delicious' debacle.

> Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste.

They buy on size and appearance signals that, within familiar varieties, correlate very strongly with taste, because you can't taste offerings in the store to choose which to buy.

This is then exploited by the commercial supply chain in a way which proves Goodhart’s Law.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#38

Post by dmurray »

asdff wrote: post #30
alexose wrote: post #11

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 ru…

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…

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.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#39

Post by asdff »

pixl97 wrote: post #23
atentaten wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste. We'll buy a pint of massive, red, perfect looking berries that have zero flavor before we'll buy a smaller, dented berry that has the best flavor on the planet. Add to that the berries tend to be picked green and shipped long distances and you have the perfect maelstrom for the next 'red delicious' debacle.

Give people some credit here. If you took an heirloom strawberry and put it through the wringer of shipping it to idaho in the dead of winter, it will be moldy jam by the end. Farmers markets have heirlooms but just take a look at them: the tomatoes at the bottom of the pile will be all crushed by the ones at the top because this cultivar is not selected for its tensile strength when sitting in a pile in the produce section.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#40

Post by Karrot_Kream »

rippercushions wrote: post #16

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…

There are high-end weed products out there. High quality wax, concentrates, and edibles for discerning customers exists. Certain dispensaries also specialize in higher quality product. I enjoy many of these myself as legal weed in my area is still much cheaper than alcohol and I prefer the product.

Wine has had a stable market for centuries with products aimed at many customer segments, high and low quality segments included. Weed is just beginning, and the biggest customer segment by aggregate demand will be the undiscerning customer. Thinking otherwise is silly IMO.

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