Pot farm boom slams Northern Calif. environment

[maryjaneismyfre]

Its not like there were jungles underneath our concrete at some point or another.. It is just part of a bigger problem of how we live and law claim and ownership to stuff we don't even understand yet.. Slap a flag down, fence the border and lay a slab down of gray stuff! The whole world was wild at some point, buffalo and bison roamed and shit... We are just too greedy, take what is not ours to take, kill what we don't need, shit on ours and our neighbors doorsteps. It stems from the attitude and evil of the same power/authority complex that feels like it has the right to dictate what we do with our bodies for the sake of its' own profit. Our environment gets the same treatment and respect and most are so cultured within this all pervasive attitude of greed that they cannot see the trees from the forest and see that it is only structured for those at the top of the pyramid and to all us commoners' detriment.

Lets hope in 2013 the shepherds wake up and lead the sheep away from the cliff. Let us be examples to the non-growers and smokers and be aware and conscious of the future.

 

[trichrider]

propaganda. that is from the government.

we are at war.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Hydro, how do you propose to remove what is a fundamental part of human psychology from the equation? Greed (resources), self-preservation (sex)--both are vital and fundamental to the success of this primate we call Homo sapiens.

What a ridiculous concept... I don't.

What you can control though is how profitable a commodity can be.
Restrict it through prohibition and you suddenly create huge profit margins from it.

Why are you asking such a silly question? This is kids stuff. *sigh*

REMOVE THE PROFIT... and the desire for people to be greedily involved with it dissolves. NO profit... NO GREED! Simple, really.

You don't see people killing each other to bring baseball bats in from other countries... do you?

You don't see people from other countries sneaking into the national forests and setting up clandestine baseball bat manufacturing companies...

The fact that people don't 'get' this about prohibition is so lame.

Stay Safe!

edit: This is being an asshole? LOL Wake up folks.

 

[SeaMaiden]

H-S, you can check the asshole shit at the door, mkay? You just shut down what could have been a discussion. The fact that you can't seem to stop yourself from taking such a condescending tone with people is *so* lame.

 

[VagPuncher]

Everybody relaxing or i'll start banning people.

 

[Z-ro]

HS, since you know it all, please tell us how you propose to 100% remove profit and greed from the cannabis industry, thanks.

 

[Ziggaro]

Yeah I guess the problem is that once you legalize it, you will drive the profit margin down. At that point I think there are two dangers. One is that the biggest companies end up being the ones to survive because the volume of their sales overcomes some of the profit margin loss.
The other is that by reducing the profit margins you will have people trying to go bigger than ever, using whatever means (chemicals, hormones, GE) to get the best harvests.

 

[slimjoint]

What a ridiculous concept... I don't.

What you can control though is how profitable a commodity can be.
Restrict it through prohibition and you suddenly create huge profit margins from it.

Why are you asking such a silly question? This is kids stuff. *sigh*

REMOVE THE PROFIT... and the desire for people to be greedily involved with it dissolves. NO profit... NO GREED! Simple, really.

You don't see people killing each other to bring baseball bats in from other countries... do you?

You don't see people from other countries sneaking into the national forests and setting up clandestine baseball bat manufacturing companies...

The fact that people don't 'get' this about prohibition is so lame.

Stay Safe!

Legalize and take profit margin away? Thats a stupid idea.
Someones still gonna grow it and fuck up the enviorment, now lets just grow 1000 to make that profit and fuck the enviornent up even more.

 

[jayjayfrank]

when you look at it from the perspective of "shit, i am going to have to grow way more weed to make the same amount of profit" you are going to loose. you are growing weed for a black market. prohibition, the dust bowl, etc etc market forces. you are not breaking the law by growing 1000 plants you are breaking the law by pumping a million gallons out of a river/dumbing it into a stream, that is still illegal. has been for like 50 years(100?) still, not that long. and you can understand when youre a farmer that came here from a third world country that does it anyway these miscommunications are going to happen.

$10,000 bottle of wine and $2,000 per pound of truffles or a tall can and blunt wrap for $2, the choice is yours.

do you want to make money or grow weed? is working for philipmorris so bad? well, nowadays everybodys an independent contractor, but thats another issue...

 

[Avinash.miles]

Legalize and take profit margin away? Thats a stupid idea.
Someones still gonna grow it and fuck up the enviorment, now lets just grow 1000 to make that profit and fuck the enviornent up even more.

cartels running illegal ops wont do that, they will switch to another more easily profitable and likely black market operation or scam.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

cartels running illegal ops wont do that, they will switch to another more easily profitable and likely black market operation or scam.

Exactly what I previously said.

Remove the profit and the greed goes elsewhere. You'll NEVER stop greed. *shrug*

It's really not that difficult a concept... once you stop listening to what the govt has been preaching the last 70 years.

Stay Safe!

 

[THE PABLOS]

There would be no forest grow operations if prohibition were ended. Without prohibition...it would be grown on farms eventually. Might be farms run by big companies...but it sure as hell..wouldn't be on public or sensitive lands.

It would be way easy to farm on a large scale...and you could do it in better locations. The forest has never been a primo place to grow...just a prohibition driven...necessity. Look at that grapevine

 

[ItsGrowTime]

Maybe I missed it but did the article differentiate whether these "pot farms" are on private property or public property? The snippet quoted didn't say.

One generally is free to use whatever resources are on their property, even if it means grading hillsides and diverting water sources. You did pay for the use of the land after all. If it's my property then I'll damn well do what I please with it.

 

[monsoon]

Water rights run with the land, not with who owns the property. You can own a property that has water on it but still have no legal right to use it if that land in in the Western US/under a Water rights decree and there is anything other than a "free river" designation.

Once a "call" is made on water downstream, only those property owners who have purchased Water rights have the right to use the water, In Cali, there are more Water rights than water (this is true in colorado as well) so to think you carry any legal standing as a mere property owner is a pipe dream. If you block or divert someone else's water they have every right to come onto your property and ensure they recieve >their<, not >your< water.

Likewise, the mineral rights are often seperate from the ownership of the land. Ask anyone who is being fracked in the West.

 

[village green]

Any one who has seen "Chinatown" knows this conflict has been going on a long time.

 

[SeaMaiden]

^^^ One of Dave's favorite movies. We can't drive through Owens Valley without him mentioning it. Or the internment camp.

What a ridiculous concept... I don't.

What you can control though is how profitable a commodity can be.
Restrict it through prohibition and you suddenly create huge profit margins from it.

Why are you asking such a silly question? This is kids stuff. *sigh*

REMOVE THE PROFIT... and the desire for people to be greedily involved with it dissolves. NO profit... NO GREED! Simple, really.

You don't see people killing each other to bring baseball bats in from other countries... do you?

You don't see people from other countries sneaking into the national forests and setting up clandestine baseball bat manufacturing companies...

The fact that people don't 'get' this about prohibition is so lame.

Stay Safe!

edit: This is being an asshole? LOL Wake up folks.

Being an asshole is making assumptions about others, and/or treating them as though they're idiots. I've given you a lot of chances (you're not aware of it) and not taken you to task specifically because of your Asperger's. However, that diagnosis is only going to take someone who's big enough to play house and be a daddy so far. Yes, you're being an asshole with this response to an honest question. You seem to think you know everything and have all answers, and everyone else are idiots because they don't think like you do.



In the meantime, I'm simply going to say that I personally know of legal growers who can't afford to have water shipped to their location. So, guess what they do. OH! That's right, they siphon water off the river. Many don't have inet access, so there are many things they can't just look up like we can, so they may use pesticides that are awful for the environment, or they may use fertilizers that are just as bad. They're not livin' large, they're just trying to pay their bills. But, they're also taking shortcuts.

How many cannabis cultivators are we aware of who are taking shortcuts? I know a few. How many are doing it to increase their profit margin? I can't say I know a single one. The ones I know personally are living hand-to-mouth, and that's why they're cutting those corners.

In many places in the world, the US and California included, there are these things called "poor people." And sometimes it's these people who are just trying to get by that are causing the damage. So somebody's just trying to keep food in their bellies and all we have to say about it is end prohibition?

Prohibition doesn't cause cyanide fishing. But there's cyanide fishing.
Prohibition doesn't cause strip logging. But there's strip logging.
Prohibition doesn't cause mari/aquaculture (methods that are harmful). But there's mariculture.
Prohibition doesn't cause GMOs and glyphosate. But there are GMOs and glyphosate.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Most everybody commenting here has made good points. As already hinted at, I think some of the disagreements here result from the way the article was written. It starts out discussing near coastal wilderness within the Eel River watershed by Eureka. Then we jump to Fishers killed by wood-rat poison near Yosemite on the Sierra Nevada west slope. Then the article ends with a gratuitous mention of household electricity consumption throughout the entire state. A result of this is that we were like the blind men and the elephant, each correct in their narrow focus, but unable to agree because each of our focus' is different.

HydroSoil and myself homed in on the guerrilla growers in the wilderness aspect of this article. We both agree that packing supplies far into the wilds on public land to live like a wild hermit while tending an illicit garden only makes sense under the conditions created by prohibition. I've read nothing here to change my mind.

Sea Maiden read the article and saw her local scene; private property owners on the west slope trying to eek out a living by growing. These are people working their own land in the quasi legal situation created by prop 215. And like people everywhere, everyone cuts corners to get by, with a resulting cumulative effect upon the environment. No different than someone struggling to get by operating a small vineyard.

I think everybody's correct here. We're just correct about different things, and have been talking past one another instead of having a real conversation.

 

[THE PABLOS]

Lots of crusading...no solutions. Kill the poor? Maybe we need to end consumerism 1st...but since that will not happen...let's start with ending prohibition. It's a tough world....so imperfect

 

[dagnabit]

What you can control though is how profitable a commodity can be.
Restrict it through prohibition and you suddenly create huge profit margins from it.

lower the profit margins on a product and the manufacturer will lower the cost of production.
this will actually WORSEN the environmental impact.

This is kids stuff. *sigh*

REMOVE THE PROFIT... and the desire for people to be greedily involved with it dissolves. NO profit... NO GREED! Simple, really.

how the hell do you "remove profit"
after full legalization only altruistic growers will do so and donate all their product so everyone smokes for free?
This is kids stuff. *sigh*

You don't see people killing each other to bring baseball bats in from other countries... do you?

environmental impact of the baseball bat industry?
that is what we are discussing...

You don't see people from other countries sneaking into the national forests and setting up clandestine baseball bat manufacturing companies...

nope they get special permission to clear cut whole swaths of of forests and use the lumber to make bats.

The fact that people don't 'get' this about prohibition is so lame.

the fact you dont get simple business/human nature is kids stuff *sigh*

edit: This is being an asshole? LOL Wake up folks.

the only assholeish part i see is you being convinced of some idiotic notion of "removing profit" by ending prohibition..

afterall there is no prohibition on baseball bats but manufacturers still make profit and heavily impact the environment.

 

[oldchuck]

We're in for a long transition, I think, until cannabis becomes an ordinary component of agricultural production and there will be a lot of unknowable steps in between. Once it does become fully legal to grow anywhere by anybody weed will take its place among farmers pretty much like corn or wheat or tomatoes.

Think about tobacco. Tobacco is a lot harder to grow and process than weed but check out the price of a pack of cigarettes and most of that is taxes. Tobacco is very cheap compared to the price of weed. So is just about any other crop. And they all make a profit. If there is no profit then no one will grow it, process it, or distribute it.

Regarding water rights, you all are talking about western U.S. water law, prior appropriation, separate water rights from property ownership. That ain't the way it is in the east. We have lots of water and the rights are riparian which means you own the right to use water passing through your land. You do not, however, have the right to pollute it.