Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
California marijuana growers north of San Francisco continue to face mandatory evacuation orders as well as likely tens of millions of dollars in crop damage and loss amid widespread wildfires in Wine Country and surrounding areas.
Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association said Tuesday the fires in Sonoma and Mendocino counties have caused "the worst year on record for California's growers."
More than two dozen CGA members had lost their entire farms in the blazes burning near Santa Rosa, Redwood Valley and beyond. "This is going to leave a deep scar," Allen said.
"I had one conversation today where the family was in tears, saying, 'We don't know how we're going to make it to January, let alone next planting season,'" Allen said.
According to county surveys, the number of cannabis gardens in Sonoma County might be anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000. Revenues from cannabis are unknown but likely total in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
"We have a lot of people who have lost their farms in the last 36 hours, and their homes," said Tawnie Logan, chair of the Sonoma County Growers Alliance.
Logan said that unlike wineries, cannabis farmers generally cannot obtain crop or fire insurance. Those that do get insured pay exorbitant rates for skimpy coverage. She said she knows of a $2 million crop in a Santa Rosa greenhouse that was reduced to ash Sunday night.
"There's no way for them to recover the millions in anticipated revenue they just lost," she said. "It's gone. It's ashes."
Leading San Francisco dispensary SPARC was preparing to harvest its outdoor crop Tuesday.
SPARC's farm in Glen Ellen sustained "some pretty substantial damage" from the Nuns Fire, workers there said.
Cannabis attorney and Santa Rosa resident Joe Rogoway had to evacuate his family from their home Tuesday morning at 4 a.m., his colleagues stated. Rogoway's Santa Rosa office remains closed Tuesday.
Another farm, Sonoma County Cannabis Company, sustained major losses, according to multiple reports. "There are no words right now to describe the loss, the heart break and the trauma that our beloved home and community is going through," the company posted to its Instagram account. "We are trying to save what we can."
Major Santa Rosa cannabis manufacturer CannaCraft closed its 110-employee business Monday. On Tuesday, it reopened with a skeleton crew that is working amid "awful" air quality, Long said. All employees are accounted for, but losses have been felt company-wide.
"We have no employees that were not impacted in some way or another," Long said. "A lot of family, a lot of friends and a few employees did lose their homes."
Regional dispensaries like Organicann reported being closed Monday, or could not be reached by phone during business hours.
Robert Jacob, the former Sebastopol mayor and former director of the Peace in Medicine dispensary in that city reported on Facebook this morning that he feared his house was gone: "Well, the fire was a block away from our house when James evacuated. Zero percent containment and 20,000 acres burning. I'm afraid we're going to lose our house."
The timing of wildfire season could not be worse for cannabis, because the delicate, fragrant flower buds bloom in the middle of fire season. Farmers had been cutting for the last couple weeks, but "there was a lot of stuff that's still heavy on the bush and our 8-12 weeks strains just getting ready to be harvested –that is tremendous loss," Logan said.
"Especially when it's ripe – I can tell you from personal experience, wildfire definitely will make your cannabis have a smoky flavor to it; just like wine," Kristin Nevedal, executive director of the International Cannabis Farmers Association, based in the Humboldt County town of Garberville, said in a September interview.
"We've got about 30 percent of our farm still sitting out there –just covered. It's going to be tough. All of our product is covered in ash and soot and just billows of smoke," Logan said.
Beyond picking up the smell of the fires, smoke-exposed crops are more susceptible to disease, leading to unhealthy levels of mold, mildew and fungus.
Nevedal said farmers won't know the extent of smoke damage until after the harvest season, which runs through October.
California is America's leading domestic producer of cannabis – growing an estimated 13 million pounds per year. Four out of five of those pounds of pot is shipped out of state, researchers estimate. Much of that pot is grown outdoors, and is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall.
Northern California harbors the world's largest concentration of cannabis farms in the remote forested mountainsides of Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties. Further south in Sonoma County, where the Tubbs Fire is burning, many commercial medical and soon-to-be-recreational as well as personal cannabis farms also exist, along with ancillary businesses.
Allen said Sonoma County's location makes it a magnet for cannabis commerce. An acre of cannabis is worth an estimated $1.7 million.
"It's located right there between three counties where so much of our product comes from, and its proximity to the Bay Area makes it a huge marketplace, with a lot of processing and manufacturing; just a huge industrial leader in general."
Santa Rosa has emerged as the epicenter of the modern legal pot economy in California, said Logan, and the devastation there would be analogous to the effects on the technology industry if a fire swept through Silicon Valley.
"What would we do if we had that loss? We're just praying right now that rains come and that the winds don't pick up and change direction," she said.
Officials reported the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa was about 1 percent contained Tuesday morning.
The fires came not only at the worst time of the year, but in the toughest year in decades, because the entire cannabis industry is in the process of seeking local and state licensing under legalization Proposition 64, Logan said. Many companies had spent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars leasing warehouse space in Santa Rosa in order to get a license. Now, those warehouses are gone and pot companies don't have insurance to cover the sunk costs, Logan said.
"Folks are out their entire life savings over the last few years to get to this point," said Allen. "There's no crop insurance, there's no FEMA aid coming to to our growers. It's a pretty extreme situation out here."
North of Sonoma County, the Redwood Complex Fire has burned 21,000 acres and firefighters had zero percent containment Tuesday morning.
The cannabis-rich Redwood Valley, two hours north of San Francisco, was choked with smoke Tuesday, communications were down and three were confirmed dead. Further loss of lives, homes, and livelihoods are expected, and residents are tense because the situation can change at any time, said Amanda Reiman, a Redwood Valley resident who is the outreach coordinator for cannabis company Flow Kana.
The area's rugged, mountainous terrain makes communications difficult on a good day. Many communities are located in isolated watersheds off the grid, and the fire compounded the difficulty of backwoods living, Reiman said. For example, some homes get their water from wells hooked up to pumps that run on solar power, but smoke has blotted out the sun for two days.
Redwood Valley cannabis farms are often co-located at farmers' homes and the hills are dotted with small farms run by mostly older folks who have not checked in, or cannot return to evacuation zones.
"So many people have their livelihoods where they live. Here, people lost everything – homes and livelihoods – in one fell swoop," said Reiman.
Kristin Nevedal, director of the International Cannabis Farmers Association, based further north in Garberville (Humboldt County), said she expects crop and home loss in Redwood Valley to be severe.
"There is not lot of information coming out of Mendocino right now," Nevedal said. "I think a lot of us know that the damage is unimaginable. I think it's going to take a while for the damage to truly be assessed. In some cases it's – unfortunately – rebuilding entire communities."
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article:
Author: David Downs
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Photo Credit: Mason Trinca
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Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association said Tuesday the fires in Sonoma and Mendocino counties have caused "the worst year on record for California's growers."
More than two dozen CGA members had lost their entire farms in the blazes burning near Santa Rosa, Redwood Valley and beyond. "This is going to leave a deep scar," Allen said.
"I had one conversation today where the family was in tears, saying, 'We don't know how we're going to make it to January, let alone next planting season,'" Allen said.
According to county surveys, the number of cannabis gardens in Sonoma County might be anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000. Revenues from cannabis are unknown but likely total in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
"We have a lot of people who have lost their farms in the last 36 hours, and their homes," said Tawnie Logan, chair of the Sonoma County Growers Alliance.
Logan said that unlike wineries, cannabis farmers generally cannot obtain crop or fire insurance. Those that do get insured pay exorbitant rates for skimpy coverage. She said she knows of a $2 million crop in a Santa Rosa greenhouse that was reduced to ash Sunday night.
"There's no way for them to recover the millions in anticipated revenue they just lost," she said. "It's gone. It's ashes."
Leading San Francisco dispensary SPARC was preparing to harvest its outdoor crop Tuesday.
SPARC's farm in Glen Ellen sustained "some pretty substantial damage" from the Nuns Fire, workers there said.
Cannabis attorney and Santa Rosa resident Joe Rogoway had to evacuate his family from their home Tuesday morning at 4 a.m., his colleagues stated. Rogoway's Santa Rosa office remains closed Tuesday.
Another farm, Sonoma County Cannabis Company, sustained major losses, according to multiple reports. "There are no words right now to describe the loss, the heart break and the trauma that our beloved home and community is going through," the company posted to its Instagram account. "We are trying to save what we can."
Major Santa Rosa cannabis manufacturer CannaCraft closed its 110-employee business Monday. On Tuesday, it reopened with a skeleton crew that is working amid "awful" air quality, Long said. All employees are accounted for, but losses have been felt company-wide.
"We have no employees that were not impacted in some way or another," Long said. "A lot of family, a lot of friends and a few employees did lose their homes."
Regional dispensaries like Organicann reported being closed Monday, or could not be reached by phone during business hours.
Robert Jacob, the former Sebastopol mayor and former director of the Peace in Medicine dispensary in that city reported on Facebook this morning that he feared his house was gone: "Well, the fire was a block away from our house when James evacuated. Zero percent containment and 20,000 acres burning. I'm afraid we're going to lose our house."
The timing of wildfire season could not be worse for cannabis, because the delicate, fragrant flower buds bloom in the middle of fire season. Farmers had been cutting for the last couple weeks, but "there was a lot of stuff that's still heavy on the bush and our 8-12 weeks strains just getting ready to be harvested –that is tremendous loss," Logan said.
"Especially when it's ripe – I can tell you from personal experience, wildfire definitely will make your cannabis have a smoky flavor to it; just like wine," Kristin Nevedal, executive director of the International Cannabis Farmers Association, based in the Humboldt County town of Garberville, said in a September interview.
"We've got about 30 percent of our farm still sitting out there –just covered. It's going to be tough. All of our product is covered in ash and soot and just billows of smoke," Logan said.
Beyond picking up the smell of the fires, smoke-exposed crops are more susceptible to disease, leading to unhealthy levels of mold, mildew and fungus.
Nevedal said farmers won't know the extent of smoke damage until after the harvest season, which runs through October.
California is America's leading domestic producer of cannabis – growing an estimated 13 million pounds per year. Four out of five of those pounds of pot is shipped out of state, researchers estimate. Much of that pot is grown outdoors, and is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall.
Northern California harbors the world's largest concentration of cannabis farms in the remote forested mountainsides of Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties. Further south in Sonoma County, where the Tubbs Fire is burning, many commercial medical and soon-to-be-recreational as well as personal cannabis farms also exist, along with ancillary businesses.
Allen said Sonoma County's location makes it a magnet for cannabis commerce. An acre of cannabis is worth an estimated $1.7 million.
"It's located right there between three counties where so much of our product comes from, and its proximity to the Bay Area makes it a huge marketplace, with a lot of processing and manufacturing; just a huge industrial leader in general."
Santa Rosa has emerged as the epicenter of the modern legal pot economy in California, said Logan, and the devastation there would be analogous to the effects on the technology industry if a fire swept through Silicon Valley.
"What would we do if we had that loss? We're just praying right now that rains come and that the winds don't pick up and change direction," she said.
Officials reported the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa was about 1 percent contained Tuesday morning.
The fires came not only at the worst time of the year, but in the toughest year in decades, because the entire cannabis industry is in the process of seeking local and state licensing under legalization Proposition 64, Logan said. Many companies had spent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars leasing warehouse space in Santa Rosa in order to get a license. Now, those warehouses are gone and pot companies don't have insurance to cover the sunk costs, Logan said.
"Folks are out their entire life savings over the last few years to get to this point," said Allen. "There's no crop insurance, there's no FEMA aid coming to to our growers. It's a pretty extreme situation out here."
North of Sonoma County, the Redwood Complex Fire has burned 21,000 acres and firefighters had zero percent containment Tuesday morning.
The cannabis-rich Redwood Valley, two hours north of San Francisco, was choked with smoke Tuesday, communications were down and three were confirmed dead. Further loss of lives, homes, and livelihoods are expected, and residents are tense because the situation can change at any time, said Amanda Reiman, a Redwood Valley resident who is the outreach coordinator for cannabis company Flow Kana.
The area's rugged, mountainous terrain makes communications difficult on a good day. Many communities are located in isolated watersheds off the grid, and the fire compounded the difficulty of backwoods living, Reiman said. For example, some homes get their water from wells hooked up to pumps that run on solar power, but smoke has blotted out the sun for two days.
Redwood Valley cannabis farms are often co-located at farmers' homes and the hills are dotted with small farms run by mostly older folks who have not checked in, or cannot return to evacuation zones.
"So many people have their livelihoods where they live. Here, people lost everything – homes and livelihoods – in one fell swoop," said Reiman.
Kristin Nevedal, director of the International Cannabis Farmers Association, based further north in Garberville (Humboldt County), said she expects crop and home loss in Redwood Valley to be severe.
"There is not lot of information coming out of Mendocino right now," Nevedal said. "I think a lot of us know that the damage is unimaginable. I think it's going to take a while for the damage to truly be assessed. In some cases it's – unfortunately – rebuilding entire communities."
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article:
Author: David Downs
Contact: Feedback technical support customer service subscriber subscription help contact us written content - SFGate
Photo Credit: Mason Trinca
Website: SFGATE: San Francisco Bay Area - News, Bay Area news, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Classifieds - SFGate
