Cannabis Trade Show 2019

Cannabis is big business.

The Jackson County Exposition Park documented something so clearly that even people stuck in the hippy 1960's mindset about cannabis are forced to wake up and smell the caffeine.  

$250,000 tractor and tiller setup 

Cannabis is a real industry. 

Real vendors. Real equipment. Real banking needs. And a real effect on the labor and real estate markets.

Southern Oregon is an unusually good place to grow cannabis. It has the sunshine, the soil, the zoning, the land, the legal infrastructure, and the expertise of a community of people who have been growing it for years and know how to create the superior product demanded by end users.

Owners of rural land tell me that people are offering them big, life-changing money to lease their land for production of hemp for CBD.  Landowners are told that land that might currently produce $500 per year worth of grass hay can be used to produce $50,000 worth of CBD.

Farmers, orchardists, and business people who hire seasonal laborers tell me that they cannot get people to work for them for traditional wages. The good workers quit to work the cannabis industry, where margins are high and workers well paid. 

Trade Show scene

Medical and recreational cannabis for get-you-high cannabis with THC is still here, but it is talked about as boutique. It involved small plots and counting out individual plants to accommodate specific individual medical marijuana cardholders. 

Today's gold rush is in CBD. CBD is grown like corn or wheat, in ten, twenty, and hundred acre fields, then is sold to brokers or direct to extractor processors, then processed into medicines. 

It doesn't get one high. It is an agricultural crop, and we know how to grow it here.

The Cannabis Expo revealed an industry that has the needs of any complex industry. A photo overview:

Big tractors and specialized planting equipment.  The equipment here will cost over $250,000. On sticky clay soils there is a brief window in late spring when the soil is dry enough to work up, but not yet rock hard. A farmer needs big equipment to get a big job done in the window.

Soil conditioners and amendments. The plants need loose, soil, with the right acidity, and then the right ability to absorb nutrients. Growers are not attempting to grow big plants; they are growing big, dense flowers, so the soil needs a cycle of nitrogen for initial growth, then phosphorus and calcium for buds. There is science to it, and vendors display data showing that doing it scientifically pays off. That requires soil amendments.

Specialized equipment and service companies for processing cannabis from field to sellable condition. This involves drying the product and trimming it. HVAC vendors create dry rooms. Companies have created machines for doing preliminary and final trimming of crops. Other vendors do turn-key drying, trimming, and packaging.

Specialized banking and merchant services. The industry is transitioning from a cash business to a normalized one with computerized payroll, bank deposits, and merchant services of taking credit and debit cards.




Superior genetics. Venders display samples of different branded varieties with different characteristics valued in the end market. There is the fundamental distinction between plants with high THC (psycho-active) versus plants with high CBD and minimal THC, and then there are fine branded distinctions within each market segment.

Coming tomorrow:

A perspective by winemaker and cannabis grower Mark Wisnovsky on the state of the cannabis industry in southern Oregon. He says the business is huge and that the old guard business community is missing the opportunity to support a local industry.  

Mark Wisnovsky

But he warns that in the current market atmosphere, price signals are likely leading to over-production and future shakeout.