What’s your thoughts on this? I know plenty of people still operating in the dark.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/pot-supply-glut-california-2017-7
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I find it kind of questionable, honestly. The main reason I question the statement is because if there was that much excess, many growers would go out of business or prices would be way lower. Invisible hand of the market and all that.
There’s definitely a lot of black market cannabis right now, but I doubt that will persist in the face of legalization if it’s done correctly. But there’s other factors to consider too:
- Demand will spike, as we have seen in other states, when it goes full recreational.
- As prices start to drop, many black market producers will either be forced to go legal or disappear. Running black market operations is expensive.
- It is likely there will definitely be significant competition, but I don’t think it’s an apocalypse scenario.
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If there is too much send some my way!
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I think we’ll all know when California has more Cannabis than it can consume (Don’t underestimate Californians!). I expect you’ll start to see more pressure to legalize the export of Cannabis worldwide when supply does exceed demand.
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If they did have a surplus, I would expect a smart person would refine to a stable form, and wait the market out.
Need a commodity exchange. Treat cannabis like orange juice futures. Oh, we can wait for the day!
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“Trade all your money in for cannabis ingots!”
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We need a new icon not just like but lol!
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I guess I should take that as a compliment! Lol
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Yes! We are always gathering feedback on what new features our members would like to see. We put everything down on our product roadmap, so we can roll out the highest requested features every month!
Free beer in the brack room, wait that was my first tech job.
This is why the growersnetwork is unique. One of the reasons why anyways…
Here you have people with a lot of knowledge, connections, and foresight
based on experience and involvement within this rapidly changing industry.
It is solution orientated and educated. I am with you Hunter, I feel that
this article and conversation that went down “on record” is hard to
believe. So then you have to assume there is a motive, a seed being
planted. I am with Gary on his ideas around exportation. While national or
international exportation may be a reach for now… Perhaps with Nevada’s
drought, California is looking to provide a solution? I could potentially
see an intra-state deal going down since they are neighboring states. I’m
sure it would be complicated, overly complicated I’m sure. Maybe a once
annual transport with heavy fees to pay out both state governments. I could
definitely see it as a possibility. Maybe I am being ignorant here though.
If that did happen, it would be a good sized step towards federal
legalization.
All this being said, back to the growersnetwork. From the founder down to
the newest member…people seem to be solution orientated with long term
solutions and ideas. Discounting short term gains in pursuit of long term
friendship/partnerships…believe it or not, as the VP of URB, I haven’t
made a cent yet. We raised a little over 1M recently. I have been giving
away gallons and gallons of product, I have been organizing decently large
cash investments with other companies, and have yet to get paid myself.
Mainly just due to the time it takes to finalize all the shares purchased
and convert them into spendable money for the company. To pay the board
salaries…and make investments and acquisitions. Hire advisory boards with
big industry gurus…blah blah blah. I don’t want to get into how that
really applies here, other than I am super thankful for this place and
really share and agree with the huge vision this forum and it’s team has
for the future. This is the place to be. If you can operate and take losses
in “the knowing” or sheer intuition about the future…you are kind of
lining yourself up with universal principles which cannot be argued.
Anyways, here is a response to this article that you would get
elsewhere…in this case from a small time indoor grower in Ohio, who has
never lived anywhere else so his experience and knowledge is strictly being
expressed in those terms…which has some points that are fair…it’s just
the close minded, ignorant, attacking ego related statements, that for me,
make it hard to see what he is saying…
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in quite some time! Probably half of
the Cannabis in California is outdoor, which in my opinion is only good for
extracting, or using it to start bonfires when you go camping lol!
Next there’s probably about 20% which cannot pass testing due to banned
chemicals (pesticides, fungicides and pgr’s) so it’s disqualified from the
market! Next we have all these corporate grows that are all growing. Like
blue dream and other commercial strains knowbody wants! I would bet
everything I own that I could pop up a commercial Grow in California
tomorrow and have all my flowers sold 4 weeks before harvest and that’s a
fact! People have to understand that this is not a get rich quick scheme!
Craft Cannabis will always sell, as long as you can follow the trends, and
stay on the “up and up” as far as quality and what’s new!
This is the same reason why there are many commercial licenses up for sale
right now in Colorado. These big money investors, and corporations thought
easy get a place, fill it up harvest it, and sell it all and we’re rich!!!
Sorry that couldn’t be further from the truth, growing craft or boutique
Cannabis is not cheap or easy. If you don’t have the genetics the market is
dictating you have 10,000lbs of pillow stuffing literally. Unfortunately
some people had to find that out the hard way, but hey live and learn! In
all reality knowbody wants to smoke the “Marlboro” of marijuana, and why
would they? Let’s use a different analogy beer! People don’t want
Budweiser, people want craft microbrews! Budweiser is piss let’s face it!
Instead people want beer that was made with love, and more importantly
passion, made with the finest ingredients. Why? The answer is simple when
you put it too your lips and taste it you know the answer! I’m a bit of a
beer afficiando, and to be honest it’s not about just getting drunk,
depending on the beer and it’s ingredients you actually feel different
effects, other then drunk…
This applies to Cannabis more then ever. The Cannabis consumer is becoming
wiser Day by day! As Americans we always want the best, and this trend is
never more apparent then in the American Cannabis Industry! I’m not saying
that craft/boutique flowers cannot be produced on a large scale, I’m saying
there not, because the inputs, and the skill sets are juvenile at best and
also the genetics…
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Bravo!
You have so many outstanding analogies in your post, I don’t know where to begin.
I started my professional horticultural career in the specialty cut flower market space. We could grow things that you could not put in a box and ship halfway around the world and have any quality. We got a premium prices for every stem we produced. We were just a bit before our time.
You are correct to say the industry is at the beginning of its maturity curve. This makes things tough. One of the solutions is to hire the students from horticulture programs across the country. These young growers are making twice the money in the cannabis industry than in the traditional horticulture industry. I know that half of the recent graduates from the University of Missouri where hired into the cannabis industry. This is outstanding. I have not talked to any other universities but I expect there are some interesting numbers. Finally fresher professional horticulturist are getting a living wage.
The question becomes as the industry matures, will we see the cannabis industry support our land grant university and get in return both qualified growers and extension services that they require. It is very much a two way street.
The students need the support of industry to get the paid internships they need. They need access to the study materials from the professional cannabis industry that the traditional horticulture industry provides the students at a discounted or free price. Almost everyone I know was an a member of the Ball Seed Alumni association.
Growers need to attend things like the Ohio Short Course to learn mainstream horticultural techniques and transfer that knowledge to cannabis production.
There is a wealth of knowledge in the cannabis industry, but that knowledge is not being transferred in a common horticultural language. For example, if as a glasshouse or grow room grower, I want nutritional information from cannabis nutritional vendors to give me better information. I want to know the sources and forms of nitrogen. I want to know how much calcium is in your product. It is not as simple as N-P-K, I want a forth letter Ca, Calcium. Don’t give me ounces of your product per gallon of water give me the ppm targets that you think your product should be applied at given the type of medium I am using for growing.
Cultivars are going to be key to the industry. But from what I am reading it is a jumble of junk. We need at a minimum a way to patent the varieties. If not through the government then through an industry cooperative. As you said the consumer is getting better tastes. This is going to be a craft brewing industry at its core for a long time to come.
We need a better understanding of the genetics. The group in Canada that is mapping the genetics of cannabis is outstanding. They so far have found that we don’t know what we are growing. Sativa is really more link Indicia and Indicia is more like Sativa and the probably there is no real genetic differences between Sativa and Indicia from a genetic standpoint and we need to change the whole genera’s name to a new name.
We need to create a common language to educate the consumer. The first cannabis shop I ever visited was in Seattle. I can only compare the experience to going to a quality wine store and being talked down too. I grew up with a father who purchased great wine. He would buy second growth Bordeaux in really good years for a quarter of the price of first growth wines. We had to wait 15 years to prove that he was right, but he was always right. We need the simple talk of wine spectator in the cannabis industry. As best I can tell names are pulled out of peoples tuchases. The naming of cultivars is shit. They are great if you are a kid but as an adult Holy Moley is not a name. Yes that was one of the names at the shop. They described it as having a unique bouquet of honey and rose with a high of stellar proportions. What went through my mind? WTF was what went through my mind.
As industry leaders immerge we are going to have to help growers become more professional to raise the standards of the whole industry. We don’t need Walmart growers. Well we may. But we need growers who can grow a quality product with repeatable results.
from the voices in my head
Ethan Kayes
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Willie Nelson put it bluntly;y , either you are high or you aint high. never mind all the hoop blah. breaking it down ; you could be high for 15 minutes or high for one hour depending on the dank you are consuming.
I played around with microbes and bacteria using teas from compost and bokashi
and different forms of N with additives like C and different forms of P etc.
I also grew out amazing LOOKING weed with Jacks 20/20/20.
I could identify the strains by smell grown with the microbes and bacteria but the strains grown out with the chelated chemicals all smelled the same or had very little smell at all .
The bud seemed smaller with the organics but was definitely stickier and and easier to bend without breaking irregardless of the silly names or hype surrounding the strain. lighting also played a roll as I am an indoor grower with simpler blurple LED producing stickier, more resilient plants. Combine the full spec LED with the high brix organic style and indica/sativa whatever lables do not seem to matter.
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Gary lives in Alaska and prolly does not want to see a lot of ditch weed imported into AK , not that anyone would buy it.
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This is where I would go shopping for master growers if I were to do a start up operation. I would assume that most big names in the industry are the ones taking these grads. You get horticultural experts and pay them more than what they would get starting out, but less than what some other “master growers” would demand. I do not think growing a cannabis plant is that unique under the label “horticulturist.” Granted it has is tricks, as with any other flowering plant species. As legislation moves along and studies are conducted, these are all your new “Master Growers.” People that understand plants on a very scientific PPM level, not an ounce of this here 15 ml here, which is commercially produced and driven suggestions.
I would even imagine 
that growersnetwork is thinking of these problems, and will provide a forum/database on these specifics. Eliminating the age old “buy more” vague feeding recommendations from nutrient supply companies. It would be cool to pioneer this front with URB, I just don’t know where to start. Mainly because of the lack of data and the amount of data required. Definitely something to bring up to the microbiologists and horticulturists or our team. I feel that it would give us even more of a unique edge in the market.
The bud seemed smaller,but how much of that size is something chemically/growth hormone induced? Dialed in soil with minimal NPK input, at least you know what you are getting in your smoke. Just a question to be raised, maybe some ignorance on my part as I don’t have much experience in the chemical fertilizer realm of things. In the end, for the farmer, it is what sells…but I feel that depending on the region you live, culturally we are seeing shifts away from chemically grown plants…problem is there is really, to my knowledge no way to verify that way the plant was grown, or standardization among organic farms. I know California is looking into this. There will always be a market for each type of weed. Whether it is indoor Advanced Nutrient grown “Rapper Weed” or the more hippy holistic approach with “sun grown” cannabis put forth by organizations like this. ICFA or the girls and farmers guild at True Humboldt It is all fascinating to me and I am just glad to be a part of it and watch how it unfolds. Keep up the killer work in the AK. I’m with you on keeping it simple. 
I wasn’t really thinking that shitty grows would be eligible for exportation. I am sure only the finest, tested, Cannabis from the industry leaders in California would make the cut. These growers would be in position to push legislation around this hypothetical situation and would edge themselves in. It would have to be a win for everyone involved, including people in Alaska buying it. No one wants to see ditch weed imported anywhere, we want the quality and growing methods improved for everyone involved. Safe and of the highest quality. Anything that is substandard will fall off. Like hunter said “many black market producers will either be forced to go legal or disappear. Running black market operations is expensive” this can be applied to substandard legal operations as well.
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Great Topic Guys! Too many points for me to respond to in the limited time I have at the moment, but I thoroughly enjoyed each response. Lots of great points and wisdom. It’s a very exciting time in my opinion. The rules are being written and changing in the blink of an eye, ventures are springing up like “weeds”. Time, market demand, and the truly passionate will ultimately mould this industry as long as big gov doesn’t tilt the playing field. We can already start to see some glimpses of what it could be and I’m plenty excited about the future. Likely there will be room for diverse business types, but one thing is for sure, whatever you do…you had best do it well and better than your competition. If you’re an economy/bulk flower producer you’ll need to have a state of the art facility that can produce better cheaper product than your competitor. Maybe you’re a boutique grower who’s at the forefront of the eternal search for the best genetics, or a retail facility that produces such an experience that it becomes a destination. Whatever the niche, I think the industry will become like Chicago’s restaurant scene. Almost every restaurant will be exceptional, and unique, and you could visit a new one every day of the year, but that means if your business isn’t exceptional it won’t last long.
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I personally hope legal product is limited to the state it’s grown in. Each state should regulate their own MJ industries. A level playing field and keeping the competition local seems like the right way to go.
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That will certainly be an interesting question in the years to come. Inter-state trade is obviously regulated by the feds, but don’t forget about inter-country trade too. Australia is currently importing cannabis from Canada, and I expect California will want to export any excess it has.
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Exactly. This is what I meant when I said California will likely be the state that can put the most pressure on the Feds for export out of country. I’m certain there will be a great world-wide demand for Cannabis from California among other states when the doors to these markets are unlocked.
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