day toward the end of September, a longtime underground marijuana grower we’ll call Shawn coasted up I-86 from the Hudson Valley to Rochester to meet with a legal farmer. The farmer hadn’t been able to sell his harvest for over a year, despite owning a fully operational and licensed farm, and he wanted to talk to Shawn about moving his product into the illicit market.
“I wanted to do everything by the book. I can lose everything because of this, so it’s a big fucking deal,” says one small farmer, Jan, located about an hour from the Pennsylvania border. She had just sold five pounds of weed grown in 2022 to a dispensary on a Native American reservation. “I have to pay my taxes. I won’t be able to reapply for the official growing license if I don’t pay them. There is also my late mortgage payments. There’s no food on my table.
Brittany Carbone, owner of Tonic, a female run and operated cannabis farm, has not resorted to selling her crop on the illicit market.AT THE OUTSET OF New York’s recreational market — before the thousands of pounds of rotting bud, before a gnarled supply and before whole harvests were at stake — farmers wxere eager.
The state awarded the first retail licenses to people previously arrested for cannabis, an equity program meant to chip away at the lasting wrongs from the War on Drugs. Dispensary license holders were promised turnkey storefronts, eliminating the most restrictive factors to opening a store: capital and real estate. It was a monumental moment for what was once the nation’s leader in pot arrests; New York made more arrests for cannabis in 2010 than Texas.
In the absence of legal dispensaries, a rampant black market flourished, with upwards of 10,000 illegal stores cropping up across New York, selling cannabis grown in other states. Officials successfully passed regulations at the hearing that would allow large weed conglomerates into New York’s market ahead of their scheduled time. The original three-year embargo on the corporations was supposed to help farmers stock cash and expand their infrastructure in order to stay competitive.
Hemp — a cousin of cannabis that doesn’t contain THC, the chemical that causes psychoactive effects — had been recently legalized nationally in the Farm Act of 2018, and prices were crashing. “We thought it might help offset rising taxes because social security isn’t going to keep up with costs of living and we wanted to stay here,” says Gina, standing next to an empty one-acre plot where her cannabis had grown. One-off weed plants scatter the field. The value of her THC oil had dropped almost in half since it was extracted. “It was like a win-win. We knew we would have to invest some money, but we felt we would see it on the back end. That’s not how it happened.
The classes paired legacy growers up with a mentor: a licensed farmer who could give them advice around staying within the lines of legality. Inadvertently, the state placed two groups, distressed farmers and legacy growers, in the same room, while both of them were caving under financial pressure. According to the Legacy Growers Association, an advocacy group for New York’s long standing pot planters, “there was a divide between the small farmers and legacy” but after the harsh first year and with steep competition coming into the market, many found it was simply easier to work together.
Shawn applied for a license, but was not accepted in the initial round. With weed prices plummeting in the black market, his family’s future may depend on securing one. Waterman was awarded a legal license in February. Now, Jacobs is wary that he’s handing off the farm to his two sons while corporations threaten to undercut and out-produce him. Rudimentary business tasks, like finding a bank or insurance provider, became more difficult, as federal narcotic laws prevent basic financial institutions from servicing marijuana companies.
A farmer of 13 years, Miller specializes in certified organic fruits and vegetables, often infusing them into beverages she sells to higher-income clientele that frequent the nearby Saratoga Springs’ horse track. Some years she did well, others were a challenge. Cannabis seemed like it could solidify her homestead into a farm with staying power.