North Bay Marijuana Harvest Ravaged By Fire

The cannabis boom in California has brought many business owners in who have put everything they have into this once in a lifetime opportunity, some have been lucky with great success while others have had everything taken from them in recent wildfires.Though lucky to be alive, some have lost everything they've invested into their marijuana businesses including entire crops, processing buildings, and even homes. Some larger companies are able to stay afloat due to multiple locations and incomes, but smaller farmers have been left with little options. Luckily there have been relief efforts to help these smaller businesses get back on their feet, with help from friends in the wine industry and North Bay marijuana farmers, many of these businesses will be saved from going under. Donations are being accepted through SPARC as well as The California Growers Association. There is still plenty of cannabis in the state to keep dispensaries stocked, but it will take time and a lot of hard work to get the destroyed farms back up and running.

The timing couldn’t be worse. SPARC and other cultivators are in the middle of their harvest, and their losses will be major. Pearson may be able to save some of his crop through CO2 extraction for oils, he says. And as far as his dispensary’s supply chain, “there’s plenty of cannabis in California.” The dispensary has made arrangements to stock up from other providers, and both locations remain open for business as usual.

But Pearson is a big fish, and his concern, from an industry perspective, is for the small farmers. In Sonoma, hundreds of them are transitioning from an unregulated market to a regulated one, and this year in particular, they’ve spent money on biological impact reports for their land, on application fees, and on other investments to enter the legal fray.