Plummeting Marijuana Prices for Growers

[backyardbogfan]

Gallo

Gallo

I get so tired of hearing this.

Deep pocket corporations have the money to research how to grow the absolute best product.

You'll be buying their genetics one day, no different than a corn farmer does.

If every wine drinker only drank two buck chuck Bordeaux would go out of business but obviously they haven't.

 

[minds_I]

Hello all,

There be a lot of grapes grown here in Mendo as well.

While I certainly am not a fan of Monsanto (even though its in the portfolio), I do not think they would be involved in the niche market more to the point I think Monsanto et al. would be interested in the industrial aspects of cannabis.

As for myself, there will be heirloom seeds to be had for the backyard guy to be sure.

Loving the independence...now if I could only develop a taste for wine....

Driving down the 101 in early September is a glorious drive to just about Windsor.

minds_I

 

[vostok]

Deep Pocket Companies gonna come in ...look around try this thry that ....and with luck!! ...leave.


Or the alternative is they stay and sell THC to kids and sundry, NO lets drop prices now for 2 years so they see it as a loss and will have to go elsewhere

 

[fatigues]

Napa is to wine as Mendocino is to great cannabis.

There will always be a demand for premium well grown cannabis.

I get so tired of hearing this.

Deep pocket corporations have the money to research how to grow the absolute best product.

You'll be buying their genetics one day, no different than a corn farmer does.

I think you are both right.

There will always be a demand for gourmet weed, but Big Business will end up owning 98% of the market -- and yes, they probably will make most of the great scientific and tech innovations in cannabis and cannabis processing in the generations to come.

That does not mean that this theoretical "Big Cannabis" will necessarily come up with every good idea, or that they will be able to leverage or scale every good idea they come across to the industrial sized markets they will be designed to exploit. Some ideas will prove to be excellent -- but will only prove to be practical on a smaller scale.

I expect we will see over the coming decades that you will both prove to be correct over time.

This isn't a Zero-sum game.

 

[Chamba]

Big corporations will definitely dominate the market but don't expect them to produce a product that's any better than corporation produced food (which is bland, stale, full of chemicals and lacking in nutrients)...but the packaging will be colorful, the slogans catchy and the best sellers will be the biggest advertisers!

and Monsanto and corporations like them will finance politicians to pass laws that will help them monopolize the market.....sure, retail prices will be low but the end product will be similar to tobacco cigarettes or dog food which are lacking in taste, stale, full of additives and the main differences between them will be the packaging...welcome to blandsville

 

[GreenintheThumb]

Deep Pocket Companies gonna come in ...look around try this thry that ....and with luck!! ...leave.

They don't leave when there's a lot of money to be made. A whole hell of a lot of money. On a brand new emerging market, with a nearly perfect situation to use political power to protect their own interests as the rules and regulations of this market are currently being written.

Do you know why in Colorado we have now lost vertical integration (the unification of cannabis producers and cannabis distribution centers) when every activist group including the big money centers of MMIG lobbied against it? Well they were all out spent on their lobbying effort by one singular group by a factor of 200%. Get ready for the real mega-grows because these people are solely interested in manufacturing.

Or the alternative is they stay and sell THC to kids and sundry, NO lets drop prices now for 2 years so they see it as a loss and will have to go elsewhere

Wow...I don't even know what to say to this. These people aren't fools, they have now set up structured situations where they are protected from federal blowback and community outrage. You won't know when these sharks are swimming next door. You'll just suddenly notice you've been horribly out-funded. Maybe hear some rumors but the people in the know have all had to sign NDAs.

It's funny you even bring up a 2 year price drop to scare away the sort of interests that are now pursuing the cannabis market. Money talks and there's no one currently operating who can play these sort of games against real money. Hedge fund money, oil money, big tobacco money. They can do things to the market that really squeeze the little guy, they've perfected these techniques and gotten more rich than you can imagine doing it in other markets. Markets with way smaller margins than ours.

I know for a fact there's 30 million sitting in escrow for one single groups "experiment" in Colorado. I also know this is just a drop in a bucket, that it's playing around money for these people. And these aren't the sort of short sighted, blow-hards you find of Discovery Channel programming. These people are already putting political pressure into other states to start locking up markets while protecting their interests. And these aren't even the great white sharks yet, these are the reef sharks who've smelled some chum in the water and are swimming to check it out.

The wave of change is coming growers. Best prepare with a flotation device.

 

[fatigues]

Big corporations will definitely dominate the market but don't expect them to produce a product that's any better than corporation produced food

I would expect that industrial scale processing of resin and cannabis extract products will be prove to be vastly better than presently available on a cottage-industry scale.

So will a Coors or an Interbrew SA make better and more perfect ice hash or a near perfect BHO? (More to the point - something better, more efficient and more clever, stable, and uniform than BHO?)

Yes I think they will. In fact, I have absolutely no doubt of it at all.

Does that mean that the best bud will still come from a pedantic (if not obsessive) organic grower from Humboldt? I expect that if its gourmet bud you want, hand pampered will still be the way to go.

 

[Crooked8]

Big corps will come in and for sure set a standard. Eventually, indoor will have a set standard because there is always an electric, rent or mortgage and nutrient cost involved not to mention time. That price cant plummet too much farther or nobody will be capable of producing indoor. The outdoor crops will plummet even farther but in the end there is still the amount of time nutes and other costs involved. It bottoms out eventually. I know i can buy milano cookies. Or, i can go to a store that sells amazing home made cookies that cost 1.89 a piece. The difference in price is staggering. People will always pay for higher quality and for rarity. If you have a a strain you created demand for, thats worth something too. I wonder if the day will come when marlboro buys a million dollar clone from some breeder that layed down sick genetics.

 

[Chamba]

indoor commercial crops will be a thing of the past as it's just not cost effective when a ton will be worth what a kilo or two is now.....after legalization, 99.99% of cannabis will be grown outdoors in the open or outdoors in poly tunnels in green houses on a mega scale....and unless they ban imports or add high taxes on them, it's likely most cannabis will be imported from sub-tropical zones.

If I was experienced with designing or manufacturing farm equipment, I would now begin working on designs. prototypes and patents for cannabis cultivation, harvesting and processing equipment that can be used on the same scale as wheat and corn is grown now,,,,,because that's where there will be large potential profits.

 

[Chamba]

I wonder if the day will come when marlboro buys a million dollar clone from some breeder that layed down sick genetics.

It more likely that a company like Monsanto will sue that breeder into bankruptcy for growing that corporation's patented genetics.

and if you look at tomatoes, cigarettes, cereals or any other type of processed food or drink and at how disgustingly bland they are, and when you smoke the current commercially grown bud, do you really think cannabis with a wonderful high will ever hit the mass market when big corporations takes over...that's highly unlikely...they will be only interested in a strain that produces big, is resistant to molds, is uniform and looks good.....the most important thing - the quality of the high and to a lesser extent potency and taste won't even figure as important to them, much like it doesn't matter to the average cash cropper now.

and if you think that corporations will produce a product with less insecticides, chemical ferts, additives, growth hormones, fungicides and other poisons than many cash croppers do now...going by what is in our supermarket food now, I wouldn't bet on it!

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Nothing against good hash but that bho is bad for people. BushyOG

I dig everything else you said, but this^ It is only true of poorly made bho.

BHO properly made, purged, and decarboxylated is the base ingredient for curing cancer, and many other diseases. Ingestion or skin application is best for tumor shrinking, and a dab will instantly kill pain and nausea. If the medicine is properly made the dab is very smooth.

I have Chrons disease and it cures the pain, nausea, inflammation, and prevents me from having to have multiple surgeries.

BOG making BHO with the trim from some of your strains has been very effective medicine in helping one of my patient not reject his bone marrow transplant.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

indoor commercial crops will be a thing of the past as it's just not cost effective when a ton will be worth what a kilo or two is now.....after legalization, 99.99% of cannabis will be grown outdoors in the open or outdoors in poly tunnels in green houses on a mega scale....and unless they ban imports or add high taxes on them, it's likely most cannabis will be imported from sub-tropical zones.

If I was experienced with designing or manufacturing farm equipment, I would now begin working on designs. prototypes and patents for cannabis cultivation, harvesting and processing equipment that can be used on the same scale as wheat and corn is grown now,,,,,because that's where there will be large potential profits.

^ good post. People will still want indoor quality, but it will not be cost effective to use HPS lighting. The future is sealed, environment controlled green houses.

 

[Chamba]

The future is sealed, environment controlled green houses.

The future of the best quality, connoisseur bud will be and although many types of (florist's) cut flowers are grown in green houses now, but cannabis is a hardy plant and will be grown with huge machinery on large acreage farms in temperate and tropical zones, lowland and highland areas as it just won't be economical to do it otherwise...it will be grown on the same scale as tobacco is now, probably on the same land, and anyway, if the conditions are suited to the strain, it is grown expertly and handled correctly, nothing beats the high from sun grown cannabis and the sun is free....with a tractor pulling an automatic seedling planter that can plant tens of acres per day, irrigation, aerial spraying etc and huge harvesters, even the bud that huge warehouse set-ups can produce will be 50 (or whatever) times more expensive than corporation farm produced bud.

The future of breeding and seed production will be in climate controlled glass houses and there will be huge profits there, but not the bud that millions will be smoking.

 

[Chamba]

and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but indoor type strains with their couchy, boring stones will gradually be replaced by tropical grown strains that produce a much more active and stimulating high......of course there will still be lethargic, sleepy strains to buy, but most people will be smoking pot similar to the highs we smoked in the 70's.

and with this, among other positive changes will be resurgence in innovation, design, the arts etc stimulated by sun grown sativas that will increase our IQ's instead of dumbing us down.

I'm looking forward to the future when cannabis prohibition finally ends worldwide...I think the world will be a better place.

 

[mojave green]

an evaporative cooled greenhouse in the mojave desert. that's my dream!

 

[sprinkl]

Tobacco companies will treat cannabis like they do tobacco. Poorly grown, fed with toxic chems, sprayed with toxic chems. Poor-ass curing, then sprayed with any kind of usable chemical to improve taste and addictiveness. It won't be nothing like the good weed we know, but people all over the world will get shitfaced and love it anyway.
There will always be demand for good cannabis, it'll just be a normal price compared to other legal industries. If you want to get rich you'll have to grow loads(invest a lot, monetary risk - you won't be able to earn back the investment with 1 grow) or sell illegally without tax(legal risk). But it'll be a nice extra if you have another job and do it in your free time. If you like growing and know what you're doing... It might be a very rewarding hobby.

and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but indoor type strains with their couchy, boring stones will gradually be replaced by tropical grown strains that produce a much more active and stimulating high......of course there will still be lethargic, sleepy strains to buy, but most people will be smoking pot similar to the highs we smoked in the 70's.

and with this, among other positive changes will be resurgence in innovation, design, the arts etc stimulated by sun grown sativas that will increase our IQ's instead of dumbing us down.

I don't really agree, most young people have never smoked such weed. What is now available as sativa is hybrid at best.
Big corp weed will be completely stupifying, shortlived and addictive in its properties.
They will also try to play along on the highquality market with good quality, well grown strains, but the signature of greed will be allover the weed.

 

[fatigues]

indoor commercial crops will be a thing of the past as it's just not cost effective when a ton will be worth what a kilo or two is now.....after legalization, 99.99% of cannabis will be grown outdoors in the open or outdoors in poly tunnels in green houses on a mega scale....and unless they ban imports or add high taxes on them, it's likely most cannabis will be imported from sub-tropical zones.

If I was experienced with designing or manufacturing farm equipment, I would now begin working on designs. prototypes and patents for cannabis cultivation, harvesting and processing equipment that can be used on the same scale as wheat and corn is grown now,,,,,because that's where there will be large potential profits.

This is a very reasonable position to adopt. I am not sure that it will not prove to be correct, however, and here is why.

I don't think anyone can dispute that in a perfect world, the most economical way to farm recreational cannabis (as oppose to industrial hemp) would be outdoors in an equatorial region. In terms of growing advantages due to climate -- that makes the most practical sense. I completely agree.

The problem is, the legal issues which surround cannabis at this point are huge -- and they aren't going to change all at once, either. And it's the delays in the change of that legal status which will screw it all up -- and probably forever, too.

Even if we accept that in the medium to long-term that cannabis prohibition will end in Canada and the United States, that does not mean that cannabis prohibition will end in other countries where support for legalization is currently much lower. Moreover, even if it does eventually end in SOME other countries with tropical and sub-tropical climates, it does not mean that prohibition will end there soon enough, relative to prohibition ending in the United States.

I think it likely that Canada will end prohibition within the next four years, (effectively ending in 2017) and the USA will be further removed from that, ending at a federal level in 2020-24. (I am not convinced that at a state level they will all end prohibition at that point, but many of them will.)

If there is any governmental agricultural policy that has been true throughout the years, it is that countries tend to use trade protection barriers to protect their fledgling industries. In this case, it goes an order of magnitude larger, with criminal laws protecting cultivation, sale, import and export. Legalization will be unequal and staggered -- coming to some countries sooner, later in others -- and never in many.

What we are most likely to see during the interim period are a series of laws and regulations which are at first designed to prevent export of domestic crops. This will favor large industrial scale farms and grows so that the crop can be monitored and controlled more easily with less manpower.

As a result, if Canada legalizes first (which seems likely) the Government of Canada will have to do everything it can to appease the American Government that its domestic legal supply is not being diverted for illegal export to the USA. We will see prison sentences for illegal growers in Canada go up **massively** and the number of licensed growers will be relatively few and concentrated so as to permit the police to more easily keep an eye on them. Those interests will invest money to enable them to grow effectively in a climate which is not terribly friendly to high-resin content outdoor cannabis. Greenhouses will be used for the most part - though there may be some attempts at outdoor farms as well.

Add in a phase of legal American growing to that almost a decade later, and suddenly we now have complaints. American interests will not want to be competing with established Canadian operations that initially have a competitive advantage. There will be lobbying and American domestic growers will want trade protection.

And once that starts, history shows us that it is extremely difficult to dislodge. Industries and farmers start with protections in place, they develop income streams based upon those protections, and then hire lobbyists when that income stream is threatened and their economic interests have become entrenched.

It doesn't take long at all before those who are making money will do everything they can to see that income is not disrupted. That's human nature since the dawn of regulated commerce.

There is every reason to believe that by the time any other nation legalizes, the industries which have grown in place with the most draconian trade protection of all time will do everything they can to ensure those protections continue.

The game changes, but with different players. Trade protectionism and prohibition in foreign lands will be used to protect domestic farmers or agribusiness from facing competition. Change will be almost impossible to implement in that sort of environment.

^ good post. People will still want indoor quality, but it will not be cost effective to use HPS lighting. The future is sealed, environment controlled green houses.

So yes, probably the greenhouse is the likely result of all of this. But not necessarily. The drive for higher and higher THC content is a feature of prohibition. We saw the same with booze in the 20s. But when prohibition ended, beer returned. It's not all about 151 whiskey.

When you add resin extraction and re-infusing resin to lesser quality cannabis in order to maintain a strength and consistency for various brands, we could easily see pre-packaged joints of lesser predictable strength rule the roost. Not everybody wants to get their face blown off with a bong hit. There is all kinds of demand in a legal market for lesser strengths -- and there are all kinds of possibilities for a highly manufactured and processed product to dramatically change how cannabis is manufactured, bought and sold once big business can exert technology and economies of scale to the product.

I don't know how it will all go down or when, but whatever happens, I don't see anybody in, say, California buying weed which was grown in Brazil and legally exported to the USA happening during the lifetime of anybody who is alive to read this post. Even if the criminal laws in both countries change to permit it, the trade and tariff protections that will be erected -- coupled with residual prohibition in many other countries, will still throw up obstacles that will prevent that from effectively happening.

Greed, entrenched interests, and trade protectionism has been a feature of international trade for over 500 years. That's not going to go away with cannabis. It's going to dominate the business for a very, very long time to come.

 

[oldchuck]

but the signature of greed will be allover the weed.

And it isn't now? That seems a little naive.

 

[Brain]

How do you regulate an industry that still exists mostly in the black market? You can't.


Good pot will remain king or should I say good enough pot will remain a necessity. As more markets around the country become producers the imports will need to compete qualitywise at the lower price, ie Cali greenhouse with equal quality at a few bucks less a unit to local indoor. It won't matter who produces in it though it will be harder for a large corporate farm bending over to be regulated to compete than it will be for a smaller untaxed farm to send their product out into the black market. Either way prices will drop I'm guessing to 800/lb for greenhouse bud making it awfully hard for new start ups to get in the game and washing out some of the less talented/passionate "farmers" in the game now. This still spells an end to the backyard farmer and the small family farms unless they can expand and keep some working capital at the same time.

Now let's recognize that most farmers think their product is the best and close their mind to ways of improving. Add to this with the need to expand and not go broke and you are gonna see cream rise to the top. Greenhouse weed is superior to full sun weed. I'll argue all day this point and win every time. I've grown this plant almost every way imaginable
that is still practical. My indoor growing friends can't compete with the light dep out there. Full sun friends have to wait for the greenhouse weed to go first before theirs get a glance. The trends in Humboldt have always eventually spread to the other areas of the state and region. They are ahead of the curve in these aspects though it is now the downward side of the curve and has been for almost a decade.

 

[mapinguari]

Brain, my sense is that people in Humboldt began using greenies for two reasons, and neither is that greenhouses produce better herb: 1) security against aerial detection; 2) protection from damp coastal fall weather.

While you may be able to make an argument that ghs can produce better herb, I don't think the hills of Humboldt will be where much legal herb is produced. People went there to grow because it's remote and has convoluted topography, not because it has the best environment for growing.

Places that might be consistently good for growing in the West include Eastern Washington and parts of the foothills east of the Sacramento Valley: lots of sunshine, pretty dry. There, outdoor growing can be done without major investments in climate control.