Standing together we can all make one move right now that will turn the tables in our favor for good. Stop pre-trimming your product. Only trim for prepaid orders. Leave that huge pile of product you can’t afford to trim. Don’t trim it. The legal market buyers are only interested in purchasing your trim. They don’t seem to care if you can pay your bills or not. Side step that issue. Do not provide trim as a product for sale any more. If there is no trim available, buyers will be forced to buy the new product you are offering…..”bucked whole plant extractable biomass”. Once they are purchasing the whole plant, your problems are over.
Today we can’t staff our farms because the price point for trimming is still higher than it is for field work. As soon as people stop trimming their product prior to having orders for it, trimmers will start transitioning to field work for employment…..then we will have the staff we need.
Today our flower prices are plummeting because there is too much flower on the market. Our trim prices are increasing because there is not enough trim on the market and the value added products that are based on oil are in demand. Indoor flower still accounts for most of the flower sold over the counter. This is making it almost impossible for us to sell sun grown flower. Once we are selling a biomass product we will again be in control of supply and demand.
If we all work together.
That means we need Mendocino, our sister County (now the largest producer of biomass product). Together, we control most of the available unbranded product in the State. That means if we change the way we sell it, they will have to buy it that way.
Once we have established this new market we can affect the prices. Biomass bucked product weighs about 2 times what your trimmed flower does. If you have 100 pounds of trimmed flower…you also have about 100 pounds of trim. Sold as a bucked product (not separated), its over 200 pounds. When trim is extracted it yields about 10% by weight. When biomass bucked product is extracted it yields 15-25% by weight. Selling trimmed product with a trimming expense of $150-200/pound+running+compliance costs at $700-1000 a pound nets no profit. If you are selling a bucked product for $500 a pound (and double it by volume), then, apples to apples, you are grossing the same $1000, minus all the trimming costs, avoiding the taxes on trimmed flower, and avoiding compliance costs related to processing or packaging. Your expenses just went way down.
Stop trying to accomodate trimmers on your property. Stop trying to package your own product. 90% of cannabis businesses in the country lose their licenses due to non-compliance at the packaging or inventory stages. Let the distributor take the fall for you. Bucking your product down as it comes off the lines is not processing and does not require all the compliance official processing does. If you are only trimming small amounts of flower for pre-paid orders your compliance issues are significantly mitigated.
Don’t stop there. Take it one step further. Choose to only sell your extractable biomass product in the Emerald Triangle. Do not export anything in extractable form. Support Humboldt manufacturers if you are from Humboldt. Support Mendocino manufacturers if you are from Mendocino. Don’t use the companies that move up either. Use historic local and family run organizations. Do not allow outside extractors to have control of our extractable products and we will maintain control of the industry. Make sure all our products go through local supply chains and end up in consumers hands directly from us – with our brand.
Establishing an “extractable biomass market” will pave the way for local farms to enter the legal industry.
We can avoid our single largest expense.
We can transition our staff to the projects we need worked on.
We can redefine our product lines.
We can affect the prices.
We can keep the industry centered in the Emerald Triangle
We are in control….just take control.
The second your product is all trimmed you have given up your power play. Everyone must stand firm on this. When we do, we will be able to set prices that include enough profit to survive on. This is the most straight forward power play imaginable. Do what you already want to do. Stop trimming!
