Southern Oregon is the Epicenter of World Class Marijuana

Southern Oregon is the greatest place in the world to grow marijuana outdoors.

We are the Bordeaux or Napa of marijuana.   We are the Sand Hill Road of marijuana.  We are the Golden State Warriors and the Michael Jordon of marijuana.    This is not idle Chamber of Commerce puffery.  After all, someplace has to be the best place, objectively and by the consensus of the market price for the product, this is it.

Latitude 42.  Long hot summer days with low humidity to reduce the chance of mold in the buds.  Accommodating laws in Oregon.    We are the best.

Northern California has its own reputation for growing marijuana, but it is a reputation for mini plots hidden away in remote places amid clearings in forests, done illegally and below the radar.   Marijuana is grown openly in southern Oregon.   Laws that attempted to hide the marijuana grows behind fences, so that innocent eyes would not be offended by the sight of a plant, had the opposite effect.   Eight foot high opaque wooden fences appeared along roadways and back into farm fields, sometimes with a big greenhouse visible within the fenced area.   It could not be more obvious.

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Amalgamation of supporting businesses.  This is important.  Marijuana growing has moved beyond college students with a potted plant under a light bulb in a dorm room closet.  Marijuana consumers have become more knowledgeable and fussy.  They want quality.  Quality takes science and specialized workers and supporting industries.    Silicon Valley has its amalgam of businesses, educational institutions, skilled and experienced employees, talent recruiters, experienced financial backers with money, industry newsletters, laws that make non-compete agreements unenforceable, a salubrious climate, and a buzz of excitement that makes people who are there understand that they are in the center of the center of the IT world.  People want to be there and the tools to do the work is there.

Silicon Valley could not be what it is if the financial and talent and educational and legal components were not there.   If there were missing pieces then other places would emerge as the epicenter: Seattle, Route 128 Massachusetts, Austin.   Success breeds success and protects the things that made success happen. Silicon Valley was first, and it had the attributes to keep it first.

Southern Oregon has an ideal physical, intellectual, legal environment, with its own array of allied businesses,  that support the marijuana industry.  In addition to the land, the water, the sunshine, the humidity, there is the intellectual and cultural infrastructure:

     Knowledgeable marijuana growers and experienced workers to do the planting, tending, trimming, and final preparation of the product.  

   Knowledgeable marijuana realtors who connect growers with landowners.
   Knowledgeable plant geneticists who have developed various plant strains with different attributes.

   Knowledgeable irrigation contractors and suppliers.

   Knowledgeable suppliers of specialized soil amendments, fertilizers, pesticides.

   Knowledgeable attorneys and land use professionals.   

   Knowledgeable and experienced buyers of the product.

   Knowledgeable people able and willing to finance new growers.

Southern Oregon was early to marijuana production, and lucky circumstances allowed it to sustain its leadership. The long hot dry summers of this Mediterranean climate was just happenstance.  Land use laws implemented 35 years ago--over the strenuous objection of most farmers--had the effect of protecting block of EFU (Exclusive Farm Use) land.  The sharp reduction of timber harvests due to environmental constraints created an unusually large body of displaced forest workers, people who wanted to work outside and stay in the area, but who were under-employed.  An existing infrastructure of irrigation systems that were built to accommodate a pear orchard industry which, conveniently, was losing its competitive advantage and made marijuana an attractive alternative to a pear crop in decline.   Oregon's early adoption of laws making it legal to grow marijuana for personal medical use gave southern Oregon a head start in developing knowledgeable marijuana growers.

Big business.  The result is that there is a great deal of money being generated in southern Oregon, much of it showing up as cash, in $20 and $100 bills.   Marijuana money cannot be banked, so the marijuana industry is visible to merchants.  People buy pumps and fertilizers and tractors and automobiles with cash, stacks of $100 bills counted out.   There are "help wanted" signs everywhere, in part because people who might otherwise be unemployed can find work doing the trimming of leaves and buds.

County adopts rules, moving grows to EFU land

There are threats.  Marijuana is federally illegal and the Trump/Sessions administration may restore enforcement of federal laws on marijuana.   Locally, marijuana is controversial because mature marijuana plants have a characteristic smell, creating complaints from neighbors and pushing production out of residential areas into farm areas.  This has had the effect of raising the value of that previously-hated EFU farm land, with landowners getting some $20,000-$30,000 for a one-season lease for a one-acre grow site.  Currently crop prices easily support that lease value but if the price of premium southern Oregon marijuana falls then the market may move the crop to other areas.  And, of course, other areas are legalizing marijuana and as Colorado and California marijuana comes onto the market the differentiation between premium southern Oregon marijuana and almost-as-good other marijuana will be lost.   Marijuana runs the risk of being an undifferentiated commodity product.

Marijuana is not yet prestigious.   Ninety years ago, during Prohibition, federal agents sought out and imprisoned manufacturers of alcohol.  Now county roads have official signs pointing people to local vineyards and wine tasting rooms.  The City of Jacksonville, Oregon has a large sign upon entering the city proudly noting that it is the Gateway to the Southern Oregon Wine Industry.  Fundraising events are centered around wine.   There is money in marijuana--many times as much money as there is in the local wine industry, which is why there are news stories about vineyard owners tearing out grapes to make room for marijuana--but it is not yet prestigious.

Wisnovsky:  Time to re-think marijuana.  It is an asset.

A transition is underway in Southern Oregon.  Some local spokespeople are voicing a revolution in local thinking, urging local citizens and business boosters to embrace marijuana rather than hide from it.   Mark Wisnovsky, proprietor of Valley View Vineyards, notes that some 40 years ago Valley View Vineyards was the first professional vineyard in the area and it was considered out of place and mildly scandalous, creating a psychoactive and highly regulated product.  That was then.  Now wine is beyond mainstream and become a tourist attraction, point of pride, and a product that makes marginal farm land valuable.   Marijuana, he notes, has the same potential arc, except for one thing.  Marijuana may have greater potential.

This cannot be grown just anywhere

Southern Oregon will be a good wine region--and after 40 vintages now a very good region--but it is unlikely to be considered world class.   The Bordeaux and Napa got their first and their wines are the standard.

However, the climate of southern Oregon is ideal for marijuana, giving us the potential to be the very, very best: world class because our very good marijuana sets the standard of excellence.  It is the competitive advantage of our region, excellence and being there early.   Wine tourism seemed impossible forty years ago and now it is commonplace.  Southern Oregon has extraordinary potential.  Jacksonville may want to change its sign and its point of pride.   

Wisnovsky says Southern Oregon marijuana can be branded, identified as very special, sold at a premium just as Napa Valley and Bordeaux wines are branded and sold a a premium.  Marijuana can become a point of economic vitality for the region--if we embrace it, not fight it.