[PHYS ORG] Insatiable demand for cannabis has created a giant carbon footprint

lulz

uh, the voters want the government to heavily tax and control cannabis. so much so, most voters don't want it legal. And tobacco is currently taxed more than cannabis, btw.

yeppers

 

I'm saying if more people were growing it the supply would be greatly increased with less impetus to steal. I live in the Midwest and you don't hear about people stealing corn, soybeans or dairy cows.

 

mind over matter. I run every other night 60-70 minutes. I do understand though.

 

You can't compare a flower to leaves. Buds from a plant will never yield as much as tobacco leaves.

I don't think you are current on this ... if we are talking hemp biomass.

Maybe you are talking last year's pricing or year before.

Farmers went crazy and out-produced the market, and collapsed it. Supply/Demand elasticity slapped them in the face. I think a lot of them couldn't find buyers, which caused the collapse. And even then, the price per pound (farmer receivables) is above tobacco. I think by 25% ... it was 20x more valuable before the Farm Bill.

imo, this collapsed-market pricing in a nationally legal market is proof the consumer values CBD over tobacco. That makes it a very bad comp, when you are talking actual smokeable THC buds vs the higher yield leaves of tobacco.

The OP article said the main problem with energy pricing was the cultivators having to grow within Denver ... due to laws. There is better energy pricing out there. And that isn't high tech.

I don't know why you keep saying "high-tech solutions". Consolidated farming in tight spaces isn't anymore high-tech than chickens and dairy in tight spaces. Likewise, moving your "factory farm" to better, cheaper energy resources isn't "high tech."

Energy use improves yield, quality and consistency, giving your tractor and the Sun approach significant competition ... wrt a commodity that even a novice consumer can tell quality differences.

I don't get this. Consumers will always view it differently than other agricultural, because of its pschoactive effect

 

ok ... But you can't sell those out of your pocket. And religious zealots aren't vandalizing it.

• Are you imagining vast pot fields?
• The entire tobacco industy only uses 350k acres, or something like that.
• By comparison, Central Valley alone has 7 million acres of irrigated land
• The average acreage of a tobacco farm is 65 acres ... about half the size of a golf course
• In a typical 18 acre Amazon warehouse, utilizing the existing technology of stacked plants, you produce the same acreage, easily.

CBD/hemp fields are the primary crop, as they are legal, and more consumers buy that, than psychoactive drugs. They are outdoors, but can't produce THC, by law.

If you move the THC production outdoors with no security (this isn't vast fields of crops), Colorado is proving it will be found and stolen or vandalized.

I'm not sure, but they might have even made laws forcing secure/indoor facilities, due to the State having a 15% vested-interest in eliminating a black market ... and as proactive crime-prevention.

 

There are certainly small scale corn and soybean sales. Just go to a farmer's market and check out the sales of sweet corn. For that matter there are a lot of small scale agricultural products that are sold on a retail scale and with sufficient markup. Consider things like heirloom tomatoes or local sourced honey.

I'm not saying that cannibis will get to that level but certainly if it is universally legalized we will see growth of it will get much wider and concurrently supply get much greater so that it won't be such a high priced luxury item still finding it's way between legal and illegal.

Consider during Prohibition there was a big need to guard stills both to guard the profits but also the products. While running a high quality microbrewery can be profitable there isn't much need to protect it from people coming in to steal your beer. The bigger security need is to keep someone from stealing the copper used for the piping and vats.

 

Heh

 

well... you don't need a limited-supply cultivator license to grow small-scale corn, and you don't need a buddy with a dispensary license to sell them for you at the farmer's markets. ppl who get the cultivator licenses aren't growing a backyard of plants.

You can make guesses as to why CO has no outdoor cultivators, but I still don't believe outdoor production is a slam-dunk more efficient way to do these small, year-round harvests (relatively speaking to consumption of other ag crops).

I get it that Colorado is currently benefitting from out-of-state resident sales that will dry up if all states legalize ... potentially pushing prices down. But the state can control supply with their licenses, too. The state might not want a drastic reduction of price for fear of increased use. Who knows? that's some mulit-variable speculation.

You'd think after 9 years, if competitors could start a Price War in Colorado, they would have, tourists or not. It hasn't happened. Maybe the cultivators simply control the price and quality with these limited licenses, and found their sweet-spot price and production methods.

Reasonable to say restrictive cultivator and dispensary licensing will still be a thing, even in nationwide legalization.

I think ppl have it in their mind Pot will be sold anywhere cigs are, and any farmer can plant it. I doubt that. I don't see voters having passed that yet, anywhere, right?

 

Kudos to everybody contributing to this discussion, I have learned a lot and the debate is not turning into a death match.

This is what the D&D should be about.

 

Widespread legalization might change that just as we have small scale breweries and distilleries.

CO and WA did benefit a lot from having the only legal US markets but as more states are legalizing and seeing the benefits of it that is slowly changing. SD legalized recreational cannibis last election and there is a bill making it's way through the MN Legislature right now.

 

HEYPARTNER IS A TOTAL LEFT LOSER!!