Last seasons plant stalks are seen at Seth Jacobs' marijuana planting field at his Slack Hollow farm in Argyle, N.Y., Friday, May 12, 2023. Farmers growing New York's first legal adult marijuana crop are having trouble moving product because there's only a dozen licensed dispensaries statewide to sell to. ARGYLE, N.Y. — — Seth Jacobs has about 100 bins packed with marijuana flower sitting in storage at his upstate New York farm.
But the farmers' plight in New York is directly tied to the bumpy launch of the state's recreational pot market. Unlicensed shops rushed in to fill the void, especially in New York City, but those outlets aren't a legal market for the state's farmers. Federal law prohibits the New York farmers from transporting their crop across state lines.
Jacobs keep his bins of buds at Slack Hollow Organics in secure, temperature controlled units. More valuable still is the distillate at various processors he's waiting to sell. Elsewhere in rural New York, Brittany Carbone, co-founder of Tricolla Farms, said the stock they're sitting on includes 1,500 packs of pre-rolled joints and about 2,000 packs of edibles.