From Politico: An Inconvenient Truth (About Weed)
“For being such a ‘green’ industry, there’s some skeletons in the closet,” said Kaitlin Urso, an environmental consultant with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Despite piecemeal attempts by states and some growers to reduce their power consumption, at least one expert estimates the industry’s footprint already accounts for more than 1 percent of U.S. electricity consumption and continues to rise. Complicating matters further, federal laws also bar the flow of weed over state lines. That requires companies to grow cannabis in each state where they want to do business and deprives them of the scale that makes other industries more efficient.
President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress have made cutting the nation’s carbon footprint a top priority. Biden wants to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and his plan pinpoints agricultural and industrial emissions as major targets for reduction. Yet, while cannabis cultivators in the 37 states with some form of legal weed will have to meet any federal standards created, they will not qualify for any federal incentives to help industries go green.
If I were trying to undercut Global Climate Change arguments, I would do my best to frame the perfect to be the enemy of the good without exception.Report
Seems to me that growing weed outside would solve a ton of this minor problem. Carbon capture, less power use etc. Of course it would have to be federally legal so the DEA wouldn’t swoop in and burn it all.Report
it’s happening in my state, people are buying up land in the Panhandle for weed farms. We are apparently the laxest state in the nation for regulations; we are “recreational legal in all but name”. (https://www.denverpost.com/2021/08/09/oklahoma-marijuana-boom-colorado-cannabis-companies/)
My understanding is it’s a pretty water-demanding crop, which makes me a bit concerned, the Panhandle doesn’t exactly get a lot of rain.
I also admit I dislike the fact that in my town literally the only small businesses that have opened in over a year are dispensaries, and we have at least 4x as many dispensaries as grocery stores.
that said: it’s more environmentally friendly than cryptomining, I’ll give it that.Report
I had always heard that marijuana was similar to catnip insofar as once it took hold in any given place, hoo boy, you’re never gonna get rid of it.
So I got to googling.
Apparently that’s in the neighborhood of true for ditchweed and if you don’t mind smoking the 3.2 beer of marijuana (aka “Dad Weed”), you’re fine with what the rain delivers. But if you want something worth cultivating and worth selling? You’re going to need a water delivery system because you’re going to need about 2 gallons per eighth. For your plant that you’re growing inside in a bucket from Home Depot, that means somewhere around 40 gallons of water.
Per plant.
Which means that they’re going to need irrigation if they’re going to hope to compete against people turning a profit.Report
One of the more amusing conspiracy theories I heard was that Northern California wildfires of the past decade didn’t have anything to do with PG&E, but were in fact Mexican cartels responding to legalization by burning out the backwoods growers of the Emerald Triangle. (The theorist posted some maps with vague markups sketching out fire-start locations and “crowdsource-determined grow fields”.)Report
As conspiracy theories go, that’s fairly coherent. Apart from the whole “not knowing where the grow fields are” thing, I guess.Report
During WWII large areas in eastern Nebraska were planted with industrial hemp after the Japanese blocked exports from SE and Southern Asia. After the war it was largely plowed under and farmers returned to more typical crops. The exceptions were in ravines and along streams subject to regular flooding. Once established in such settings, it chokes out everything else and is excellent for preventing erosion. In the early- and mid-1970s, if you knew where to look, there were still thousands of acres of it around.
I worked at an agricultural field lab during some of my college summers in that area. From time to time the hippies in Lincoln heard about the hemp growing in some of the gullies there and would sneak in to pick flowers. The year I was head peon, I was the one stuck with hiking out and trying to explain that they were wasting their time — getting drunk on 3.2 beer is easy compared to trying to get high on industrial hemp.Report
And yet industrial hemp is still not a thing in the US . . .Report
I think that this has more to do with government silliness dating back to Hearst than anything else.Report
I still have no idea whether industrial hemp is actually that useful, or that was just a myth propagated by stoners trying to improve the image of hemp in general. Some quick googling suggests that there isn’t much of a market for it in countries where it’s legal.Report
The fact that it was so weirdly illegal in so many different ways for so long is a data point that makes me wonder what might be done when it’s actually legal to grow again.
I’ve be curious about hemp jeans for a while… but, dang. 100 bucks?!?!?Report
IIRC, it’s more a case of inertia than anything. It was weirdly illegal in so many places for long enough that other alternatives were found, or it was never allowed to disrupt existing markets.
And since the number of markets where it’s not a PITA to manufacture, or use industrial hemp is still limited, it still struggles to disrupt.Report
As a source of fiber, it was historically a good choice for temperate climates. Eg, every medieval village in Europe had a communal hemp stand.
As of today, for cloth hemp can rival cotton, but at a price premium. For paper hemp is superior to wood, but at a price premium. It’s still good for cordage, but synthetics are better in many applications.
The price premiums are mostly — although not entirely — a matter of scale.Report
Industrial? Hoo boy. Yeah, the only thing that stuff is good for is making rolling papers.
(The stuff that this guy I know got back in college was just normal run-of-the-mill outdoorsy stuff. Not great, but it’d get him through a couple of albums.)Report
Is this substantially different than other kinds of crops? Rice is a thirsty crop and so is cotton. And lots of crops need irrigation. So at some point we’re going to have to declassify marijuana at the Federal level and there is substantial political support for doing it, and then farmers can grow it the same way they grow tobacco or Crenshaw melons.
The longer-term issue to me is whether demand for this thirsty crop will tap out already-stressed water resources. We live in a time when the Pacific Northwest (!) faces annual droughts (a relative term here, but still) and the Ogallala Aquifer’s overuse gets wells to run dry in eight states. If marijuana is a particularly thirsty crop, are we willing to let our already-antiquated water law regimes take on yet another stressor on a natural resource we now know is both finite and diminishing over time?Report
Pot will grow anywhere and it’s easily moved. I’d bet good money that once it’s federally decriminalized then growth/production will move to places where water is abundant. So likely the midwest and northeast. Maybe the south east too? Tobacco country would probably take to pot growing and curing like fish to water.Report
The more specialized the cultivar, the less true “anywhere and it’s easily moved” becomes. Today’s premium weed is grown to a particular lighting schedule. Watered and fed to schedule. Picked at the right time, and cured for several weeks in tightly controlled conditions, then sold within a certain amount of time. Protected from cross pollination in order to maintain the seed line. If a dispensary is going to stock what has become the standard stuff in recreational states in March, it’s going to be harvested in January.Report
I’m far from an expert on weed so I appreciate the insight. Couldn’t you do all that, though, in a grow house located in a place with lots of cheap water rather than in the northwest, west or southwest and simply ship the finished product to places with less water?Report
The amount of water needed to grow the weed you would consume in a year is insignificant compared to what you use taking showers.
Illegal inside grows are not detected because of their water use, but because of their abnormally high electricity use.
Here in a state that has recreational weed for some years now, the concern is not water, but that weed is going to make it harder to meet the CO2 emissions because of the electricity consumed.Report
I had thought something like “I thought the industry switched to LEDs?” and googled and… well, maybe some of it did, but the most expensive high-intensity discharge light is still cheaper than the cheapest LED (at least according to my “best marijuana light” google).
But we’re no longer talking about a single plant in a single Home Depot bucket in the corner. We’re talking about turning the rumpus room into a grow room at this point.Report
I wonder if anyone has experimented with the pink LED grow lights.Report
“Municipal officials could not be reached for comment.”Report
So that is a yes.Report
This is big business now. Growers have experimented with every conceivable variation. The basic rules of thumb, as I have heard them, is blue-heavy light favors vegetation growth, red-heavy light favors budding and flower development, and balanced white light makes it enormously easier for the humans tending the plants to do their jobs.Report
Yep, and LEDs allow for switching and tuning that light in ways that HID lamps and other, cheaper grow lights don’t. Plus all the energy savings you mention.Report
Cheaper up-front investment perhaps, but LEDs will consume half the electricity and last much longer.
As more grow operations move towards staff in scrub outfits, plastic hair coverings, N95 masks, nitrile gloves, etc, heat from HID lights becomes a personnel issue. The special clothing, and changes in uniform when moving from one grow area to another, is not to protect the people. It’s to avoid moving mold or mites between rooms.Report
I used to make jokes about how home brewers and home marijuana growers sound identical when it came to discussion of hops.
“It’s got an oniony, almost grassy start, but when you finish, it tastes like you just bit into a lemon.”
As the “real” grow operations turn into clean rooms, the amateur artisans will become even more insufferable.Report
Is this substantially different than other kinds of crops?
Most plants grow, yes. But we planted catnip in the backyard (R.I.P. Petronius) and, a few years later, had more of it than any pet store could use. We tried to get rid of it and while we were more than able to temporarily get rid of it with weedwhackers and clippers, it always came back the next year, stronger than ever.
Sometimes I drive past my old house and wonder if I could get away with somehow getting past the privacy fence in the backyard to see if they still have my blackberries or my raspberries… I know for damn sure that they still have my Catnip unless they bought some industrial-grade RoundUp.
And if you’re wondering “well, it was catnip… was it the good stuff?”, lemme just say that Petey went *NUTS* for it.
So… is it substantially different from other kinds of crops? It seems to me that if you left a lot of food-kinda crops alone for 20 years, you’d come back and find them significantly less consumer-grade than when you started.
Catnip, however, remains high quality.
As for marijuana, I’m sure that industrial still won’t get you high but ditch weed?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that ditch weed would still be good after 20 years.
At least, the stuff that this guy I know about had access to back in the 90’s was good enough to pay money for.Report
At least in Colorado, outside means: single growing cycle per year; loss of pollination control; less than optimal watering cycle; and other weather risks*. There are places in the San Luis Valley where they’re trying it in greenhouses augmented by grow lights, with mixed success.
* You can’t buy crop insurance for marijuana to protect against early freezes, monsoon hail storms, etc.Report
Long story short state by state legalization, while good, isn’t as good as federal legalization would be.Report
If only there was a political party dedicated to ending the federal prohibition…Report
There is one (the GOP) that’s opposed and one (The Dems) that is slowly, wincingly and haltingly moving towards legalization.Report
One percent of US electricity consumption? Oh no!
(wait until they learn about Bitcoin!)Report