June 4, 2023 GMTLast 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. 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.
ARGYLE, N.Y. — Seth Jacobs has about 100 bins packed with marijuana flower sitting in storage at his upstate New York farm.The 700 pounds of pungent flower was harvested last year as part of New York’s first crop of legally grown pot for recreational use. He also has roughly 220 pounds of distillate. Months later, there are only a dozen licensed dispensaries statewide to sell what Jacobs and more than 200 other farmers produced.
Now, another growing season is underway and farmers still sitting on much of last year’s harvest are in a financial bind. “We are really under the gun here. We’re all losing money,” Jacobs recently said at his farm on rolling land near the Vermont border. “Even the most entrepreneurial and ambitious amongst us just can’t move much product in this environment.”