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Wholesale pot prices plummet. Now there starting to get better

CaliforniaWatch
Wholesale pot prices plummet in CA http://bit.ly/9wbalm

Pot prices plummet in state, putting growers in a bind
May 15, 2010 | Michael Montgomery
For nearly 30 years, the biggest threat to Northern California pot growers has been raids by local and federal drug agents. But along with those considerable risks came propped-up marijuana prices that insured rich profits.
Now, the pot industry faces a new economic reality: falling prices.
With a more tolerant legal environment and a rush of new growers, wholesale prices for marijuana cultivated in outdoor pot gardens have plummeted this year to under $2,000 per pound, from a peak of $5,000 to $6,000 a decade ago, according to interviews with more than 20 marijuana growers, brokers and law enforcement officials.
In some areas, prices have dropped to levels not seen since the Reagan administration launched a massive anti-drug operation known as the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.
“The most successful government price support program in history is finally failing,” said Charley Custer, a writer and community organizer who arrived in Humboldt County just months before CAMP was launched in 1983. “The price of pot is plummeting.”
In Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties - California’s unofficial pot capitals - growers are still sitting on large amounts of processed marijuana that was harvested last fall. Dealers who normally arrive during winter months to buy local supplies aren’t showing up much these days.
“When some people do move it (marijuana) they don’t get nearly the price they were hoping for,” Custer said.
That goes for both legal growers who cultivate limited quantities of pot under California’s medical marijuana laws and illegal operators who often grow larger amounts. Mendocino Sheriff Tom Allman said the lowest price he’s ever seen for a pound of pot was this year in the town of Boonville - $800.
“That’s rock-bottom low,” he said.
Some growers can’t get rid of their marijuana at any price, Allman said. He recalled another recent case involving an illegal grower who was caught with 800 pounds of processed marijuana in his home.
“We asked him: ‘What are you going to do with 800 pounds of processed (marijuana)?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
As recently as last December, things were still pretty upbeat among Northern California growers. At Area 101, an events and healing center near Laytonville, revelers celebrated the Emerald Cup, a public competition for the season’s best pot buds.
But Area 101 owner Tim Blake said the mood darkened as the spring planting season opened with many storerooms still full of last year’s product.
“There’s a tremendous amount of concern, border-lining on fear,” said Blake.
Blake is a former underground grower and cancer survivor who now cultivates medical marijuana. He said the drop in pot prices is in part the result of more small-scale growers rushing in as law enforcement shifts its focus to large-scale growing operations with suspected links to Mexican drug gangs.
But Blake said another factor is the quality of outdoor-grown pot as it competes against marijuana being cultivated in private homes and warehouses around the state.
Indoor-grown marijuana — much of it cultivated in big urban areas - is increasingly favored by dispensaries and consumers for its looks, consistency and potency. It costs more to produce than pot grown under the sun, but commands a much higher price - as much as double. That’s one reason retail prices haven’t hit the skids.
“What's happening is the people that don't have quality product aren't selling it. So they're the ones that are creating this panic,” Blake said.
“Most of the people that have a quality product and are willing to sell it at a decent price, are doing okay. So just like in every other agricultural industry, when you get too many vineyards, and too many people growing vines out there, then only the good ones make it,” he said.
Some growers are surviving the market shift by cultivating new varieties that command higher prices or by illegally exporting to other states where profit margins are nearly double.
But others don’t have the skills or resources to adapt.
“There are several generations of people up here who are good at one thing--growing pot. Now no one seems to want their product, and they don’t have anything else to do,” said Anna Hamilton, an activist and radio personality who helped organize a series of public forums on the future of the marijuana industry in Northern California.
In recent weeks, Hamilton stoked controversy when she spoke out against an initiative on the fall ballot to legalize the personal use of marijuana, saying it will push prices even lower and devastate the local economy.
“There is a lot of anxiety,” she said. “People look at the possibility of legalization this fall and they see prices are already falling. The market is collapsing on itself.”
The slump isn’t just affecting growers. Pot money supports businesses, schools and local clinics in the region and contributions are falling this year, according to Marianne Knorzer, program director at KMUD, a community radio station in Garberville.
“I do feel a sense of what we’ve created in the past is changing now. It’s putting a hurt to this culture’s self-sufficient ways,” Knorzer said.
A radio version of this story aired on NPR's All Things Considered. For more on KQED's coverage of the changing economics of pot, my full reports for the California Report are here and here.
 

Grass Lands

Member
Veteran
All good things must come to an end...I don't feel sorry for these fucks one fucking bit...for years they made a ton of money and didn't have the intelligence to put any of it up...

hell the guy that got popped for 800lb's...could have sold the herb for 500 a P and made 400K for the year, damn good living if ya ask me...but no I think I will sit on it and wait to get top dollar...

once again I feel no sympathy for the greedy fucks who have no idea how to manage money and expect for someone else to pick them up...No one picked me up after I was sent to curb after 10 years of service to an IT firm, I picked myself up and said fuck the corporate world and I won't be heading back.
 
If you suck at growing or haven't learned how to improve your crop over the years you deserve to be left behind as in most markets (unless you're a bank, car maker or an airline!).

The article highlights the fact that if you have superior product or charging reasonable prices you have nothing to worry about.
 

Rainman

The revolution will not be televised.....
Veteran
Very immature attitudes shown around your comments in this thread. To make wholesale remarks about an entire group when you are obviously on the outside looking in, shows your true stupidity. I personally know some of the people being affected by this trend and they are true pure spirits that would give you their last dime if you asked. Greedy fucks want world class ganja for the same price as Parsley. The article does push the fact of quality over quantity which is just how it should be. Judging by some of the albums and grows of folks with the biggest mouths, I doubt if you had 800 pounds you would know what to do with it. Good or bad. So please save your wholesale coments about friends of mine clowns cause you prolly never copped more than dove at a time anyways! So what do you care what a pound costs anyways?
 

iSMOKE.KUSH

Active member
Veteran
Very immature attitudes shown around your comments in this thread. To make wholesale remarks about an entire group when you are obviously on the outside looking in, shows your true stupidity. I personally know some of the people being affected by this trend and they are true pure spirits that would give you their last dime if you asked. Greedy fucks want world class ganja for the same price as Parsley. The article does push the fact of quality over quantity which is just how it should be. Judging by some of the albums and grows of folks with the biggest mouths, I doubt if you had 800 pounds you would know what to do with it. Good or bad. So please save your wholesale coments about friends of mine clowns cause you prolly never copped more than dove at a time anyways! So what do you care what a pound costs anyways?

lol i never copped more than a dove at a time? funny funny stuff. believe you me i know the flip game better than i know the grow game. i also know what costs what out there, and right now shitty outdoor bud isn't in high demand. it says right in the article that people that grow quality are doing alright still, so that leads me to believe that this is a good thing. tell your friends to either step their game up or get out of the way.
 

Rainman

The revolution will not be televised.....
Veteran
Fool please! My friends have been growing world class herb for 3 decades indoors and out and you arent even a small time player in whatever backwater you herald from. Get some skills in either area before you start badmouthing people who have forgotten more about the herb than you will surely ever know. Step their game up? Now thats funny for sure. How about you get some skills yourself and show us something other than your limited vocab, mrs I smoke kush. The fact you even advertise that in you name is funny enuff in itself.
 
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iSMOKE.KUSH

Active member
Veteran
lol your gonna make fun of my handle? you named yourself after a retard in a movie.

anyway...dude i'm not gonna get in a pissing match with you. no point. have fun with your friends not being able to move your weed. hehe.
 

sackoweed

I took anger management already!!!! FUCK!!!
Veteran
IM not going to poke fun at people, but karma has a way of gettin back at people.. I know some of these people actually grow and get meds to people that need them, but most do it for other reasons.. And that is what i think bugs the fire outta people that dont live where this is happening. I personally know some peeps from up there and they dont hang here, their only purpose is to grow more more more more so they can make more more more and live the bling life.. Not saying this is most people from there. But cmon use commons sense sitting on 800 or 2000 lbs waiting to get top dollar is plain greedy and simply stupid.. And that is why people will come in and make the comments being made.. That of course is my opinion i will not pull out my cawk and see who's might be bigger. Im just saying.. The people wanted change now we got it.. :chin: peace n pufs..

sackO
 
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S

scarred4life

lol your gonna make fun of my handle? you named yourself after a retard in a movie.

anyway...dude i'm not gonna get in a pissing match with you. no point. have fun with your friends not being able to move your weed. hehe.

No props to JKing, but you'd better read the cannabible carefully before talkin shit...is that your sweet tart, rainman?
 

iSMOKE.KUSH

Active member
Veteran
i'm not saying anything like that and i wish all fellow quality pot growers the best of luck selling their extra meds. all i originally said was what was in the article. people with quality meds that are charging reasonable prices are having no problem. it's the greedy people demanding top dollar for sub par meds that are getting weeded out(pun intended).
 
I'd like to do a mental exercise designing a very large production-line indoor grow

for connoisseur growers, and users,

where collectives of growers, in given areas,

are fronted by a mmj dispensary

with an objective of lowering costs

while increasing quality, and production,

and staying ahead of the upcoming AB2254 legislation

any interest?
 
S

scarred4life

If you were going to do something like that, your collective would have to be very well organized and well connected, imho.
How would you divide the workload and the "donations?"
 

420247

Plant Whisperer
Veteran
I'd like to do a mental exercise designing a very large production-line indoor grow

for connoisseur growers, and users,

where collectives of growers, in given areas,

are fronted by a mmj dispensary

with an objective of lowering costs

while increasing quality, and production,

and staying ahead of the upcoming AB2254 legislation

any interest?

If the "mmj dispensary" treated it as a farmers market and had a set fee per day/week/month for a spot to "share" your wares... Whatever you want to call it ;) LOL

Could also have a monthly MMJ cup... The top of the list get the best spots in the place... And... You know what happens to the rest :tiphat:
 
a mental exercise designing a highly-efficient, large production-line, indoor grow
for connoisseur growers, and users,
where collectives of growers, in given areas,
are fronted by a mmj dispensary
with an objective of lowering costs
while increasing quality, and production,
and staying ahead of the upcoming AB2254 legislation

Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. AB 2254
http://bit.ly/besEZw

excluding 420247

thinking outside the box, and thinking production lines...

what is the best medium to grow in?

since energy costs will undoubtedly be a large part of the overhead,
what is the best bang for the buck when it comes to lights??

the object of this exercise is to obtain the lowest cost of growing

while maintaining the highest quality product

owned and operated by the growers
 

420247

Plant Whisperer
Veteran
a mental exercise designing a very large production-line indoor grow
for connoisseur growers, and users,
where collectives of growers, in given areas,
are fronted by a mmj dispensary
with an objective of lowering costs
while increasing quality, and production,
and staying ahead of the upcoming AB2254 legislation

thinking outside the box, and thinking production lines...

what is the best medium to grow in?

since energy costs will undoubtedly be a large part of the overhead,
what is the best bang for the buck when it comes to lights??

Waiting till now to find out the basics is not "staying ahead"... Seems way behind to me LOL :laughing:
 
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