What Does the Emerald Triangle Mean for the Future of Independent Weed Farms? | WEEDIQUETTE

[Music] here it is the new home of Harborside San Jose is a 10,000 sqt former Bakery I'm in California where recreational marijuana use May soon be legal to meet weed Tycoon Steve D'Angelo at the site of what will soon become the world's biggest marijuana dispensary did you ever think that you'd like one day have like a Best Buy siiz retail facility like if this is a place where cannabis lives now like did you ever think it would live in a place like this yeah you know I've I've always imagined this from the time was about 15 years old uh what's what surprised me is how long it's taken us to get here there's nothing more American than what's happening with cannabis now man you know cannabis stayed the same for like 8,000 years basically there was very little change in cannabis and the product right then it collided with American Ingenuity uh nothing's ever going to be the same and we're now you know talking about how the Pie Gets diced up and you know whose livelihood is going to be effective in a positive and possibly a negative way so it starts becoming very very serious it's about people being able to pay their mortgage and some really keeping the farm you know what I mean keeping the farm keeping the [Applause] [Music] [Music] Farm California supplies up to 80% of all the weed in the US and the Emerald Triangle a remote free County region north of San Francisco is C weeds epicenter producing an estimated 4 to7 billion doar of marijuana a year it all started in the' 60s the first plants were sewn by hippies who migrated from San Francisco and Beyond into the hills to live private lives off the land and illegally grow weed while the Cannabis became famous and their numbers grew The Growers remained a hidden and Ultra secretive community in 1996 California passed proposition 215 making it the first state to legalize medical marijuana and allowing Farmers to grow small numbers of plants legally for the first time while some Farmers embraced medical growing others continued to grow illegally now California looks set to move beyond the restrictions of medical legalization to full recreational legalization sounds like great news but the market will be open to Big pocketed investors and that could result in gargantuan weed factories putting small cannabis Farmers out of business will California's full legalization end up shutting independent Growers out of the very culture they [Music] created oh Another Day in Paradise good morning ladies smells like OG I'm in the hills of mesino County to meet Casey O'Neal a third generation HT farmer who's hoping he and his fellow ganja Growers won't lose their foothold in what might become the biggest marijuana Market on the planet you know I grow very specific types of strains to call them the thunderbucket face punch uh they have very wait what do you call it thunder bucket face punch very strong very heavy this is the land I was born and raised on in the early early days days it was it was really rough they hauled water from town they had no money and then one of the neighbors ke my grandpa in to the magic that was grown in the woods and we started to realize like canvis was a potential so this has been my home my whole life except for when I went to college yeah and then as I came of age and it became my farm and so over time it has developed into my livelihood my office my reality and so you know to be able to live and farm on the place that I was born and raised on is a is a powerful thing we got this guys we got this yep so you can see that we've got these kale plants that are kind of growing up and the Cannabis is getting bigger so what we're going to do is we're going to clear back the kale first you kind of make a little bunch and sometimes we'll we'll bundle them I like to just throw it in the tub rather than bundling it but it's kind of you know f with proclivities and so is it common to grow vegetables that you eat right next to cannabis like this we've been doing some surveys uh 40% of our small cannabis Farms cultivate uh other food crops for market and 75% of our Farms cultivate food crops for personal consumption without cannabis I would not grow production vegetables at all the work is too hard the pay is too little this is part of a system that helps make small farms work our entire reality especially here in the triangle is supported fundamentally by cannabis dollars Timber went out a long time ago fishing went out a long time ago this is the Fallout of an industrial Timber regime and this land has been used for industrial practices in the past and and then sort of relegated to the hippies and and we have been able to breathe life back into it and create these microscale homesteads these self-supporting Farms we didn't do this because it was a job we did it because it was a way of life and cannabis was part of that do you think that this way of life is in Jeopardy yes I looked at the future of Regulation and I said I'm not going to survive and when the thing goes into legitimacy the idea that we would be denied the right to participate in it it would be a great tragedy it comes back to advocacy and being part of the democratic process because there's a river of corporate money heading our way from a variety of different corporate interests who would love to see the thing develop under a commodity corporate perspective that doesn't include us and so they try to typ cast us as Criminal and so to be able to represent myself and say I'm not some nameless faceless criminal I'm me this is what I do and cannabis is part of it and it should be allowed to be changes the dynamic the number one question I get outside the area is well how quickly can you scale yeah and my response is by definition craft does not scale I can't there's an estimated 53,000 small farms in California that grow cannabis and the question is will we be surfs producing things for conglomerates or will be will we be specialized micro craft scale Farms see you guys are all sort of banding together as cannabis Farmers to sort of make sure or like hope that the regulations that come out when legalization happens in 2016 carves out a niche for you guys being able to sort of stand for that has been both very difficult but very invigorating it's like we're people didn't end up out here in the Hills because they were public people they ended up out here because they really liked their privacy and so dragging it into the public has been very difficult and and trying and it's hard but in a sense you think that's what you have to do to survive totally and that's why the more effective we are at banding together and representing ourselves as business owners as Crafts People the more of us will make it today Casey is hosting a recruitment meeting for the emerald growers association a lobbying group he chairs he wants to unite local cannabis farmers and business owners to influence lawmakers in Sacramento and swing the coming marijuana legalization in their favor has the co-op on one side I'm going to do a a legislative update I'll talk about what's been going on in the state legislature it's been pretty hectic there's going to be compromises that we're not going to like but there's going to be lots of stuff that we really needed to happen that'll be there and you know at this point I'm confident that we are making our voices heard enough to carve out the things that we absolutely must have so we're holding these barbecues and these workshops and we're getting the experts together and we're figuring out how do we help our Farms make the transition cuz nobody's compliant I'm not compliant none of our Farms are compliant right now but we've never had the opportunity to know what compliance is and that's so what it is can we do individually or as Farms to make this thing go forward communicate with everybody join EG come to Sacramento talk to your people that are Eastward win the hearts and minds I think you know that we all have to take that step to join the co-op and work together we can't all just you know hide and do our own thing if we want to survive the thing is we keep telling our story that's the whole point this is you know families this is you know lots of people are just making a simple living which is like the American dream the family farm with an honest product really they call it criminal but we know it's the most honest product you can produce because it it's beautiful it's healing and uh it's magic it comes back to we were really successful at creating this Mystique nobody knows anything about us they have all these default positions about us you guys are all like criminals and pillagers right and us coming and being like ah this is who we are they're like oh you guys are a bunch of hippies okay cool it feels like a you know a really Monumental shift is happening and and we're shoving hard can we eat now while Casey has successfully coed this band of marijuana Farmers out of hiding to join forces and push the coming policy in their favor I wonder if this is really the best option these Farmers have for surviving the arrival of big business while old school Growers like are tackling policy in the hills of Menino I've come down to the township of Leonville to speak with a new breed of Weed Farmer these guys moved to the triangle after medical marijuana went legal in the 9s and they became known as the green rushers among them were Jessica and Jamie [Music] warm Jamie met Jessica at Burning Man as she was completing her PhD I know that's a sheep that's a sheep yeah and gives to the Sheep they are now raising their child Donovan on this idilic Farm where they also grow weed Northern California is one of the last places where you can you can grow and Homestead you know um on some relatively cheap California land right right here we have our Greenhouse uhhuh the strains here I'm really excited about so in the back here we have a harleen we have a um an OG black and that's called happy valentine these small things are agent orange Donovan's watering they're they're tiny ones they're small sometimes I feel a little funny talking about strands when I'm in front of my kid or kids generally is that right yeah I mean I don't know it's a maybe a testament to how strong the stigma can be which is like this is something I do all the time I talk to people about weed all the time and yet I feel sometimes a little like hesitant to be like oh OG again right something that I think we're coming out of and you know that's one thing that is so wonderful about this community this is just part of who we are you know uh the Cannabis is everywhere you know we throw barbecues here people bring kids the plants are here and it's just a normal thing while it's an Open Secret that marijuana farming is a huge industry in the Emerald Triangle most Growers have stayed hidden in the Hills due to the ongoing threat of prosecution but in order to battle the large scale operators who will set up shop when the California Market goes fully legal Jam wants to be first to Market so he's taken the risk of opening a nursery on Main Street between a thrift shop and a health food store where patients and other Growers can buy clones of his plants this is the spot this is artifact Nursery cool hi this is Camille this to meet you come on in Krishna cool welcome this is it this is it this is where patients come in and get signed in mhm so this is where all the plants are this is really the nuts and bolts of the nursery uhhuh you can smell it can you a familiar smell around here I must be used to it the hardest worker is ham right here on the floor he looks like he's hard at work hey man how are you you how you doing good patients can come in look at the Clones uh you know got a lot of different genetics you have like three different sizes you have like small Med that's exactly what we have so we start them in Rockell here get you a pretty little babies so those are $12 you've got these they step up into 3 and2 in soil they've kind of grown a little more have a stronger root mass right uh and then you can buy them as large plants as well those are ready to these look pretty nice those are ready to grow one those in my apartment so what's this one here that's oldfashioned MH locally breed strain what I like about your spot here is that we're in the center of town basically like yeah mhm it's a very like clear recognition of something that everyone knows which is in the Hills there are a bunch of people growing growing weed well there's two kinds of people in mesino County those that say they grow weed and those that don't say they grow weed those that are lying right so you're trying to I mean what it is is like here in this sort of like weed Capital you're putting down some rout some stake in the in the Main Street to say like we're a business are there any risks that are associated with that like what's on the line a lot yeah the risks yeah I mean it's federally illegal um but uh you know it's it's allowed in the state of California for medical use and we just are doing our absolute best to stay within the guidelines yeah we abide by all the rules set forth prop 215 um and yeah and just take take that risk proposition 215 was a ballot initiative to make medical marijuana legal in California and was passed by the public in 1996 it allowed individual counties to make their own rules which include limits on the number of plants that can be grown and stipulated Growers must be nonprofit but could receive quote unquote reasonable compensation a term left open to interpretation unsurprisingly enforcement of these regulations have been difficult for Growers to predict Federal and local police routinely conduct sweeping raids often tarring legal and illegal Growers with the same brush recently Trinity humbal and mesino County Sheriff's departments teamed up to conduct one of the largest raids busting multiple Farms over 4 days in June 2015 and destroying close to 100,000 plants everybody knows someone up here that's gone to jail right for something you know it's all pot related and I think that's a very real thing for a lot of us up here raising families raising small children is that there's always an element of risk whether you grow 25 plants or you grow 100 plants or you don't even grow on your property you grow on another property it keeps us up at night sometimes I think it can keep everyone up at night right getting anxiety about the police coming or um hey baby you know you worry it's like that irrational fear that someone's going to take your child away from you I know huh that will never [Laughter] happen the level of danger faced by marijuana producers like the warms who dare to make themselves visible is decided by local authorities interpretation of crop 215 I went to speak with mesino Sheriff Tom mman to find out how he decides whom to raid what are some of the challenges of being in law enforcement in a region like Menino County where there's so much marijuana grown well I the challenges are not that there's so much marijuana growing the challenge is that the laws that are on the books are not black and white and I'm going to say that there is no agreement on what the law marijuana laws are in California so my focus is to go after the people who are in my opinion taking advantage of the Goodwill voters of 1996 when they passed proposition 2115 and how are people taking advantage of that proposition well I proposition 2115 was written to be a medicinal marijuana ordinance a law and it's a very vague law but 20-year-old with a sore shoulder who says he's growing to improve his quality of life maybe needs to suck it up and get a job and uh the sore shoulder is going to go away and they've turned it around to say this is my god-given right to grow marijuana well wait a minute is it god-given right of your neighbor to be able to go in their backyard and trim their roses or have a barbecue without smelling marijuana I say it is and I imagine since this is such a big County that the actual nuts and bolts of enforcement is kind of a challenge in and of itself for the most part our marijuana investigations are complaint driven you know if a neighbor called and said my neighbor's growing marijuana and I think the Sheriff's Office should investigate our Deputy would go to the house and they' look and if need be eradicate the Marijuana arrest the person and see that they get their day in court do you think that people should be able to grow marijuana and make a living from it I think people should abide by the law and proposition 215 wasn't a proposition on how to make your house payment if they're selling one plant as and making a profit on it they're in violation of the law because they're a commercial marijuana operation I mean the reason I asked that question is that there are a lot of people who believe that the only way to survive as a medical marijuana grower in this County specifically as like legalization in California might come you have to be upfront you have to say this is who I am I am a grower but they feel that the danger of doing that is getting undue enforcement on uh compliance issues from the sheriff's department I can tell that you've been influenced by some people's very strong opinions well and in a sense I'm trying to bring their their complaints to you to see how that uh how you respond to them remember when proposition 2115 was passed by the voters it did not allow for any profit Heering so while there's people who say this is how I make my living you know and I have to make my house payment I have to pay my child's orthodon bills and so forth I'm saying well that's great but that's not what the law is you know the law might change there's like certainly a lot of energy towards making recreational or adult use legal is that something you'd be in favor of how do you think that would affect the county I have so many things to worry about throughout my day that I do not spend a lot of time on hypotheticals sure but it's something that seems to be coming like the marijuana the legalization of marijuana is a wave that's kind of hitting a lot of this country and medino County humbal County Trinity County it's where a lot of of the marijuana in this country is grown so how is it that you aren't preparing in a like sort of what how are you preparing you know I'm going to guess you're very good at what you do of of doing interviews and knowing how to operate a film crew and whatever okay I I'm very good at enforcing the law so while so excuse me I listen to you listen to me okay no one can predict where we're going and and if we don't know where we're going we don't know what our problems are if we don't know what our problems are going to be we don't know what the solutions are yet but we'll figure it out thanks Sheriff appreciate the time while the worms take a risk by becoming the first to Market with a brick and mortar on Main Street I'm driving to humbold County just north of mesino to meet an altogether different kind of marijuana farmer hidden among the mountains here presiding over much larger grows this region is home to the millionaire Outlaw so I'm going to meet this guy Ziggy who's been farming here for decades and apparently he uses a BMW as his farm truck so he's doing pretty well well here we are wild cat Farms this is called wild cat Farms wild cat farms and so this is one sort of large grow operation so how many plants are in this parcel right here this is a 99 plot uhhuh down below is Blue Dream uhhuh on the lower part of the tier what we're walking through here is old school AK-47 and I have Sour Diesel and what we found out is some of these fuy strains like the sour diesel have a synergestic effect with the opiates an American love drugs and when the doctor gives them the oxy the sour d or the OG gives that oxy a little extra bang for the buck like you take a look at this and it's big like this is a lot these are a lot of plants but like what what's the surrounding area like what what what did we pass when we were driving here oh you probably passed 700 farms in the 17 miles coming up the hill as you notice 700 700 yes there's probably a billion dollars annually in cannabis money that comes to this County you go to the gas station they have a cash counting machine um people come in that are running Diesel and might buy $77,000 worth of fuel in $20 bills that you can either weigh the 20 or you can run it through the machine but it it's a very unique cash economy here and where is that money going right now um it's going into the bank of the stump what's the bank of the stump we can't we don't bank with like the real Banks cuz they take our money and they tattle on us so we have to hide our money you know in Humble County it's not uncommon to hear people um talk about I forgot where I buried 500k yeah that's sound would be really stressful it's just the the reality of it and how long have you been doing this for 40 years you've been growing weed for 40 years yes for a long time like it was not it was not legal oh God no no felony pot yeah felony pot did you ever get taken down or busted oh gosh yes I've been arrested yeah but never convicted of a felony I was acquitted what is it like to go from something that was kind of like an outlaw business to something that is now considered potentially this corporate business the the corporate structure of now becoming friends with the banks who have never been my friends before and friends with the police who've never protected or served me um no no no I don't want to play that charade I'm 56 years old I'm about done I'd like to help take this to the legalization level and be able to hand the torch on to the next Generation to improve or destroy it right but I would like to go buy a Maserati with a company paycheck before I'm done having made millions in his 40 years as an outlaw grower Ziggy is cashing out in face of full legalization I went to speak with the next generation of humbal wheat grower Ziggy's Protege Leo Stone about the financial impact of total legalization you have to have a certain level of scale just so you can be profitable because it's not a cheap business to cultivate cannabis right let's get in it and what are these can these are sour diesel can you tell me like where Sour Diesel tends to be the most popular man sour d is the most popular on the East Coast you know um for the large part A lot of the buyers that come to pick up sour d are from the East Coast I mean in a sense it's an export crop right because it's so it's so popular around the country I wish it wasn't I wish we could keep the crop in state there's a lot of risk that's that's in play with people coming from the east coast and buying your crop you know you you have to deal with the uncertainty that your buyer's not going to come back next year because there's a lot of risk for buyer just to come from the East Coast bring that large amount of capital so he could be able to buy up your crop then he has to send it back we're taking product out of state it'd be safer we kept it in States yeah but the retail prices in cannabis and California alone have kind of you know they remain the same you know past 7 to 10 years you're looking at anywhere from a $6,000 to a $9,000 P pound retail right you know you cut that in half you know Growers should usually be getting anywhere from like 35 to 45 a pound which is what the status quo was for a long time but you know for some reason people are having a really hard time settling for 12 to, 1500 a pound and you know the general consensus in meno and humble is that you know a lot of a large part of the reason the bottom has dropped out of the wholesale Market was because of dispensaries the illegality of marijuana has historically kept its prices artificially high with premedical marijuana prices peaking at close to $5,000 per pound after prop 215 was passed the prices Farmers could get for wholesale weed entering the medical marijuana Market dipped down to below $2,000 per pound by 2010 once the market goes fully legal in California it's expected that prices will drop even further due to the arrival of corporations that can produce on a large scale making the survival of small craft Farmers even less likely but then what do you do as Growers do you keep you get bigger do you like how do you sort of combat the the falling prices it depends on what kind of price point you're looking for and it depends on who your network is because people that come from the Midwest and East Coast cannabis prices are inflated while Leo's Reliance on the black market might work as a short-term solution to weed's price drop what's going to happen if more states legalize or if California cracks down in the black market [Music] entirely one farmer trying to find a sustainable solution to pot's Falling wholesale prices is Swami chya he runs ganja ma Gardens alongside his life partner Nikki lto and together they're capitalizing on his reputation as a maestro grower of Premium pot Swami was born in New York in 1943 and moved to San Francisco in the late 60s where he immersed himself in hippie culture that spiritual journey led him to India where he spent over 10 years he converted to Hinduism and became a spiritual teacher known as a Swami and that's Po and Sh not the lord of the universe and then as you dance you can go the other leg too the same way the other leg and back and forth right like that returning to America he found his Indian spirituality Blended perfectly with the ideology of the back to the land hippie farmers who founded the Emerald Triangle and he has since become a Mainstay of the community and an expert cannabis [Music] producer that's that's me okay um I'm wondering can you take us around your property and sort of show us what you got here all right how did you get inspired to do this well actually I had a vision a long time ago mhm it was on July 4th and we're all just like in Bliss with the nature and so on and and the medicine of the Peyote the sacred medicine MH I had this Vision I was about halfway down the mountain it's like someone turned on a slide projector right here in my third eye and this picture was like there was this this mountain this rounded mountain in the distance and then there was these trees this row of trees and then there was this Golden Meadow yeah and then behind me these two giant pine trees is and this is like right here in my forehead and this say This brilliant picture right so then 30 years later almost to the day we took possession of this place and that was 12 years ago mm and how's it how does it feel to have sort of like a 30-year Vision kind of come true but then at the same time have that Vision kind of lay Complicated by the big business of of cannabis if say in Fresno Merced Central Valley they put up these huge green houses and they're growing thousands and thousands of plants yeah that could take our Market away it's up to us to promote our product saying that this is pure it's organic it's grown in the Sun and it's the finest that you can possibly get and it has spirit and if you're going to industrialize something you're going to take the spirit out who do you want to grow your cannabis and how you want them to grow it you look like the kind of person I want to grow my cannabis well I'm very happy to do that for you maybe we should go look at him yeah let's take a look okay so here we are at the Garden just walking out amongst them you're n mhm you're kind of exalted in a way just from the fact of this the air that they're creating these things are just in the sun this greenness and it's just it's thrilling to be in the plants we have a clean green certification which is actually more stringent than organic and so as a result we don't get 6 and 8 pound plants we get one to two to three to maximum maybe four pounds so that's another kind of Challenge almost that you're another chall but that's why we're saying if you want the purest the best you can't be looking for quantity you're looking for quality and in order for that to sort of work economically you would need the per pound cost to sort of Bear right well but see we're hoping that that that the price of cannabis is not simply a bulk commodity price you know like wheat Futures in Chicago M because it's got to be quality priced just like wine you can buy Two Buck Chuck maybe you're happy with that fine enjoy sure but if you want a real Ambrosia right you're going to pay 30 40 $50 $60 for for one bottle and we do get a premium price for our cannabis we definitely do what are the what's the sort of you know going rate for your stuff versus may not whether I really ought to tell you okay uh going rate for a wholesale pound of cannabis is anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 a pound mhm M we get from 22 to 27 so maybe that sort of cuts to the heart of it in a sense is like is weed a commodity or well weed might be a commodity but cannabis isn't okay right and so actually in our Movement we are trying to use only the word cannabis because it is what you call it and we're calling it weed it's not a weed look at this beautiful plant and it's not just growing [Music] randomly so listen we've been waiting a long time to get loaded here tell me which one would you like to smoke we got got CET here okay and take a smell of that one see this is what a connoisseur will do the first thing they'll smell they'll smell the Cannabis and then they'll look at it it's a it's Piney and Lemony Piney and Lemony right and this one is called Orange turbo that's a little skunky and maybe like tea yeah mhm I don't know you tell me which yeah well no you tell me it's your nose it's your weed right cannabis [Music] and how did you guys me known each other a long time I could begin to guess how many joints we've smoked together over that time well not only that but how many incarnations we've had together sure now in a very new incarnation of this relationship because well we have a spiritual marriage yeah you have a spiritual well he he took a lot of vows when he became a Swami I say it's not one of those vows being s mag but what's even worse is he doesn't eat onion and garlic and I'm Italian so that's the hardest part but let's show that to the cameras like like on John Stewart or something like that it's like Uncle benle Ben converted cannabis what it started as a joke really but then it became The Branding is for real you know this is something if you're going to get into the future Market you better start your branding now so we were very lucky we already kind of had a foot in the door we're actually getting a tradar marked and everything as we speak yeah oh yeah well and it's also like you have uh in Swami like a personification of the actual product that you're kind of selling right he is s of a good image well he fits yeah really one of the things we're doing with the Swami select salons is you know that the people that you know meet the grower meet the farmer so it's an educational process to say wouldn't you really rather have your cannabis grown at Turtle Creek for 60 bucks an eight oh I'm feeling pretty [Music] uh I could see Swami's brand becoming akin to the D peran of marijuana a prestigious Market position he and other small independent labels will need to hold out against the might of corporate [Music] cannabis I've come to the largest wholesale medical marijuana purchaser in the world Harborside dispensary to speak with owner Steve D'Angelo I wanted to know how the biggest player in the current medical marijuana market and the Cannabis tycoons who will follow him will affect the craft scale farmers of the Emerald Triangle you come through these doors and you see this kind of like beautiful Mecca of like of cannabis sales it's amazing so here you'll see our sample cases are all of these are grown in California all of these are grown in California is this a typical dispensary well we are probably the largest retailer of cannabis in the world as far as I know uh when we first opened this spot uh people looked at me like I was crazy they're like you're never going to be able to serve as many patients it's way too big so now we're going to go from the public part of the facility into the private secure part usually not this so uh this is the intake room this is where Growers will uh bring us their medicine and we put it through a quality control process I'll show you how that happens so big bags of weed here yeah I mean it depending on what your scale is uh we would call these average size bags of weed well I'll pretend to be a grower who comes in all right so hey Steve hey CHR how you gr this weed for you all right well let's take a look at it and so what I'm going to be looking for here is you can see there's some little crystall and structures on the surface of the vegetable material there so those are called tricomes and that's where all of the active ingredient of the cannabis plant lives there is no active ingredient in the vegetable material itself uh so by looking at the size and the shape the color and the density of those tricomes we can get a basic understanding of the quality of that cannabis the potency of the Cannabis and whether or not it was grown to full maturity or Beyond full maturity a lot of your economics I'm imagining are based on how you price your inventory as it comes in and for the farmer a lot of their economics is based on how much they can get for each pound that they sell well this is really the most critical part of our whole business model because if we don't buy the Cannabis that our patients want we won't be able to sell it right so where are we headed now we are uh getting close to the most secure part of the facility which is the Vault where we store our cash where we store our bulk medicine mhm so uh this room also is biometrically controlled [Music] okay watch your step on the way up here so this is our vault well it smells great in here yeah well for obvious reasons we don't want to have ventilation shafts in the most secure part of the facility so don't drop in here you'll see some of the bulk cannabis that's come in recently uh-huh and so you can see here all this cannabis is uh is in our branded right exactly so is this stuff that you guys grow or is this this is farmer grown no this is just our standard packaging so whatever grower brings us to it our top shelf always goes into these jars mhm what is the actual flow of cannabis to money like give me a sense of the sort of scale of the operation well we sell several pounds of cannabis uh every day uh and we take in you know north of $25 million a year uh at this particular shop right prop 215 requires that all marijuana companies including Steves remain nonprofit putting extra earnings into community services and Charities we will happily Embrace a for-profit model with equal enthusiasm as soon as that's legal but until then we'll obey the law rigorously until now Steve has been buying weed from local Growers like Swami and repackaging it thwarting any attempts they make at branding themselves but Steve has even bigger plans for when Pop becomes legal that will change the industry completely so uh right now we are in one of central California's traditional agricultural regions and we're going to be touring uh what I think uh is the future of cannabis agriculture in California or at least a part of that future uh-huh wow this is huge yeah this is uh this is quite a large greenhouse and how many plants do you think could fit in one of these warehouses or one of these green houses um you depend entirely on the size of the plant uh but in the thousands of plants thousands of plants and they would produce thousands of pounds of of Bud they would it's exciting right I mean like there's a there's a way of looking at this and saying like wow this is a lot of weed that's going to be grown here in California by scaling up we're going to be able to start providing the consistency uh that the Market's really looking for and would you be able to operate a place like this at full capacity under the medical laws or would recreational marijuana have to be legalized uh right now this would is not something that would be sanctioned uh by regulation we're working ahead we're looking forward to the day when that will happen how will places like this affect the sort of larger industry and the way that people grow there's certainly going to be displacement as this industry changes my hope and my belief is that this industry can be created in a way so that there's a lot of different tiers uh for different levels of production I think that there's plenty of consumers who are not going to want cannabis that's produced in a large facility at a large scale they're going to want cannabis that's grown in very small plots by Master Gardeners and I think of anybody's a really talented cannabis grower or a really talented concentrate maker or a really talented manufacturer of cannabis products that they're going to have a much much better future in the legal economy than they do in the underground economy now people who have just sort of been skating along uh because it's illegal and they don't need to try very hard and they don't need to compete uh those folks are not going to have a place in the new market and and you know I don't think that's a bad thing you know when we say big marijuana and you look at a place like that could have a potential like this would someone say that you are big marijuana and you're going to steal my business or you're going to steal my market share or you know you're embodying a future that might not be in line with what we think the plant is I don't think the big marijuana is a Bad Thing uh I think that big marijuana done the way that every other Big Industry in this country has been done is a bad thing but we have a potential to create a new kind of industry and that's what we need to do look there's going to be a battle for the soul of this industry uh it's underway already uh there's going to be people who are going to try and craft it in the image of every other single American corporate industry and the only way that that is not going to happen is if people who care about the plant and people who care about the future step up to the plate and start creating companies and start creating products and start creating brands that will be values based [Music] propositions after my time here I've come to realize that however the small farmers choose to adapt be it by branding their Farms as the Dom peran of cannabis or passing the mantle to the Next Generation uniting with fellow Farmers to influence legislation or rushing to become the first to market the likely winner in this new era of legalization will be the consumer marijuana quality options and services will increase while prices will fall and so it goes in America big business will make the bulk of profits while the tens of thousands of Growers of the Emerald Triangle will fight to stay alive in this Brave New Marketplace these farmers are more than just stoners ERS making easy money in the Hills they are the heart and soul of marijuana farming in America and a living link to its Origins and so the fact that a great number of them will not survive this transition feels like a loss whether legalization spells the death of the very society that founded this industry or whether growing evolves into something even better one thing's for sure it's been a privilege to have glimpsed this Bastion of renegade cannabis culture before it burns out [Music] hello [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 160,734

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, weed, marijuana, weed news, weediquette, weediquette autism, medical marijuana, drugs, drug, vice weediquette, cannabis, california, cali weed, the emerald triangle, emerald triangle weed, caliornia, cali marijuana

Id: sRNhJGeZ57Q

Length: 41min 8sec (2468 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024