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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

#101

Post by bogomipz »

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…

>"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?

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#102

Post by calibas »

Fact #1: It's so easy to produce large quantities of good quality cannabis if you know what you're doing. Just need sunshine, water, soil, and fertilizer, no need to spend much money at all.

Fact #2: The thing that made cannabis expensive was it's illegality. The difficulty in growing cannabis was that it had to be done in secret, and you could go to jail if you got caught.

Now if you put these facts together, you realize that legalization means there's no more justification for ridiculous prices on a plant that's easy to grow. The only winners in the "green rush" are the established dispensaries, and the prices will continue to drop as more states legalize marijuana.

The major black market producers are against legalization because they know it destroys their profits. An odd case where cops, criminals and pharmaceutical companies all share a common goal.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#103

Post by Galaxity »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #42
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…

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

To sun it up from the NYTimes article posted below, Oklahoma does in fact have legal medical marijuana. In addition it apparently has pretty lax regulations compared to other states on growing. Basically little limit on how many farms are allowed, how much they can grow, etc. And apparently pretty low startup costs (I assume license fees and all that are low).

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#104

Post by asdff »

galleywest200 wrote: post #98
asdff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>discerning I have serious gripes with the high end market in the dispensary. For example, Stiizy will sell you a gram of distillate in a cartridge for $60. It's the exact same product as the one being sold in that same dispensary for $20 from a brand with less instagram presence. Distillate is pretty much commoditized. Also the entire $60 1/8th market is absurd to me, it seemingly exists for people who assume price…

I am not sure what state you live in but $60 for an 1/8 is way above what one could expect to pay for "top shelf" bud here in Washington. But then again we currently have a "weed surplus" and it seems every store has a 30% sale off twice per week.

I am in Socal. Sure theres a wide range, something like is typical at just about every dispensary here but this is from just one dispensary:

$73 3.5g testing at 22% https://embed.getmeadow.com/organizations/1328/products/1176...

$20 3.5 testing at 32% https://embed.getmeadow.com/organizations/1328/products/8834...

MedMen is even worse with their top shelf prices, you probably won't find any $20 1/8th there and I keep a wide berth of those places myself.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#105

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

asdff wrote: post #89
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn feeds millions of people and animals. Pot? It doesn’t feed anyone. So I can understand the funding disparity.

It's not so much as a disparity as the funding is simply nonexistent. Pot doesn't feed anyone of course, but its legitimate medicine.

The value to society of pot vs corn is where you should look to see why government funding doesn’t match your expectations.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#106

Post by aaronbrethorst »

DonHopkins wrote: post #41
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…

>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.

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.)

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#107

Post by jjulius »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #43
LBJsPNS wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can buy ounces all day in Portland for $20. Is it Jesus incarnate? Nope. Is it perfectly good sinsemilla that gets ya high? Yup.

Where? I live in Portland and would love to try a $20 ounce.

Seconded. I'm not gonna argue that it's not cheap here, but $20 for an ounce is way too low to be true. Unless, of course, it's far worse than "Jesus incarnate".

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#108

Post by lightedman »

asdff wrote: post #35
hotpotamus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

"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."

There are so many cannabis forums on the internet (I used to be on the top 5 waaaaay back in the day) that you can find tons of research and tips on various culture methods. Right down to micro-sample cloning techniques.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#109

Post by jjulius »

pixl97 wrote: post #19
a2tech wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean $100 for 2 ounces of the marijuana plant in particular isn't cheap at all. There are some 'mild' complications in growing it, but in theory it should end up more like a bulk farming product where we talk about dollars per pound on the retail side, and dollars per ton on the wholesale side.

>I mean $100 for 2 ounces of the marijuana plant in particular isn't cheap at all.

Where are prices so low that $100 for 2 ounces "isn't cheap at all"?

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#110

Post by binvlad »

ramesh31 wrote: post #100
manicennui wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/oklahoma-marijuana-boo...

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.

Is that more of a "hahaha" funny or a "my head feels funny" funny?
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