Is big cannabis business going to destroy home growing?

Cannabis culture before legalization

The members of society who indulge in a recreational cannabis use evolve diversely in different parts of the world. The major influence is mostly local laws and the approach of the mainstream society towards cannabis. A few years ago, you could legally buy weed only in the Netherlands. Ironically enough, it is not that easy over there anymore, while some countries including various US states, Spain, and Uruguay, decided to take a more relaxed stance towards this substance. Decades of cannabis prohibition gave rise to a closed group of its supporters composed of growers, users, patients, and many activists fighting for legalization. Such a group with common interest always creates demand for specific goods.

Cannabis culture was no exception – it gave birth to a market with tools for growing, seeds, smoking devices, grinders, and many other goods. Everyone who took part in this development was in some way associated with the plant. The offer grew hand in hand with the growing demand. The market kept slowly enlarging and cannabis fairs began popping up around the globe. Today, these events remain to be the biggest meeting place for all the fans of the cannabis culture. It was during the stage of the development of this news industry, when faces that did not previously belong to the movement started appearing on the scene. Traders, managers and sales representatives, for whom the cannabis community was before a mere bunch of junkies, stopped being afraid of starting their own businesses on the cannabis market because of interesting amounts of money waiting there to be seized by them. But that was still was nothing compared with what was to follow.

Meeting of two worlds

Growers, producers of seeds and manufacturers of growing equipment mostly wanted cannabis to be legal. They believed that by stepping out of the underground, the cannabis movement will get new opportunities and that they would finally get a chance to spread their business around the whole world and show they are ready to supply the globe with their great harvests, long nurtured strains and high-tech growing gadgets. However, the big business and the cannabis culture are two completely different worlds. The wave of the legalization of medical cannabis brought a huge opportunity to earn considerable money. The long-forbidden cure was promising wide possibilities and at least millions of potential patients were too large a lure for the big investors to be overlooked.

Although cannabis culture has some economic potential, it can be hardly compared to the massive amounts of money waiting in the pharmaceutical or agricultural industry. The investment options into research in genetics and new technologies are a different area altogether. Giant companies like Monsanto and Bayer are investing millions of dollars every day into the research of all different kinds of fields! For them, cannabis culture is just a random group of potheads and dealers that hide in dark wet cellars and whose experience and opinions are completely irrelevant and often misleading. Recently, while I was attending a seminar in Berlin, I was lectured by an American gentleman that we have no idea about drying and curing of cannabis at all. You see, the man owns a company that produces gels that keep a certain level of humidity in musical instrument cases and containers that hold food and herbs. His contempt for our subculture was almost palpable, and he is far from being the only case.

Growing

Big capital involvement in the cannabis industry perhaps does not look as many of us imagined. Still, this does not mean that it is not of benefit. In my opinion, such investments can increase our knowledge about cannabis in many different respects. Nonetheless, if we want to learn to understand the plant that we grow or consume better, we must have personal experience. But thanks to exact laboratory tests, we can do chemical analysis of the plant and examine the influence of different factors on the growing process and resulting content of chemicals in the final cannabis product.Science is a highly efficient tool that can help us improve the way we grow and approach the cannabis plant as a whole. Some people say that home growers will vanish after complete legalization because the big companies will be able to grow a uniform standardized product for the minimum price.

I don’t think this will be the case. First and foremost, the price of a homegrown product can never be higher than a price of the commercial product. Second, even if we can go to a shop and buy an extract mixed precisely according to our needs, the homegrown product still has an added value, which any other product can never have. It’s all about passion. Do you remember the feeling when you see the vegetable grow in your garden and the taste it gets thanks to all the hard work you put into it? Anybody who has ever tried growing even the smallest clump of chives knows what I’m talking about. In my opinion, the answer to the question in the headline is that the big cannabis business and small home growers will continue to exist alongside each other. In the same way, we have commercial and home cultivation of vegetables. I wish you always have all the vegetables you need. Order your grow books from Mr. José directly at www.mrjose.eu