LA Weekly Provide Update On NORCAL Cannabis Farms & Wildfires

Coming from NSW (Australia) with our 2020 fire season already starting we feel for the people, their businesses and their livliehood and note that not many are paying the attention to these wildfires  as climate change has taken a backseat to the pandemic and the idiocy of the Republican National Conference .

How are these businesses managing with insurance , financial help etc whilst the sector still wallows in state bureaucratic chaos and no real indication as to Federal legalization ever being on the table.

.Per our story earlier today with the Biden / Harris ticket wittering on about decriminalization rather than taking the bull by the horns

Biden – Harris Ticket Still In Neutral About Cannabis: Car Left Idling Here Comes That “Decriminalization” Word Again

 

Never mind those morons at the RNC who seem to be in the process of producing a soap opera so appallingly written that even the most harderned Brazilian soap opera watcher would give up on the stupidity and the naffness of it all

 

 

 

Meanwhile people are dying, the world famous Redwoods are being destroyed as well as businesses and that’s not even the half it. Yep you’re right we are right royally pissed off so imagine how the farmers feel, if you can.

 

Source: The Cannabist

Source: Rolling Stone

 

Well done to LA Weekly for getting it all down on the page

The SCU Lightning Complex in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, and Stanislaus counties is also wreaking havoc at 347,196 acres and is 10 percent contained. As the cannabis industry went legal, the agricultural flats of places like Salinas, in Monterey County, made a lot more sense than random hillsides when growing at scale. Now all those farms that have popped up in recent years are under a haze created by multiple fires located across the south and east San Francisco bay and into the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The CZU Lightning Complex Fire in Santa Cruz has now devastated the industry to its roots, possibly destroying the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, but it doesn’t sound like a full confirmation has been made yet on the status of the farm according to CelebStoner. Information is still hard to come by and verify since so many places in the heart of these fires remain inaccessible.

Photo: Governor’s Office of Emergency Service

In addition to the legal operations destroyed – we’ve counted 5 so far – the mountains around Santa Cruz have long been dotted with cultivators participating on the other side of the marketplace. It’s a 100 percent guarantee at this point that for every legal name we hear there will be a couple of folks you won’t hear about. We hope their money was buried deep enough and are pulling for all.

Amongst the farms destroyed was ERB Farms. The farm told David Downs of Leafly, “We thought it was OK and then we started seeing it over the ridge. We were like, ‘Well, the wind’s blowing that way, and it always blows that way.’ But that was not the case. This flowed into the wind.” Over two days the fire pressed toward the farm, eventually destroying it.

ERB Farms took to Instagram to let everyone know they are going to replant this year. They are hoping anyone with clones or teens will be able to help them out. They won’t be doing a GoFundMe as they believe many others will need the support in the coming days.

In the process of asking California NORML if they’d heard anything, we asked what it’s like watching the industry they’ve worked so long to help create get devastated year after year?

“It’s been heartbreaking to watch the cannabis industry go through so many tough challenges, all in a row and year after year,” Ellen Komp, CANORML’s deputy director, told L.A. Weekly. “Losing WAMM would be especially tragic, since it is such a pioneering and compassionate organization, the one on which we modeled SB420 and its medical cannabis cooperative gardens.”

One of the farms that have had to deal with fire many times over the years is 3rd Gen Family in Mendocino. While not always as newsworthy as the Mendocino Complex Fire, plenty of other blazes have given them trouble over the years due to the impact on the wider community infrastructure.

Brandon Parker, the “3rd Gen” in 3rd Gen Family, told L.A. Weekly of the perils of maintaining a steady supply of water once fire season goes into full gear. “You have water handlers running off on you to catch a bigger buck on a fire because they’ll catch a steady income,” Parker said, “Northern California gets down, people make $100,000 a month in the summertime doing that.”

Even when there are no fires, people are running water all night long. “There’s a shortage of water handlers and drivers,” Parker said. “When a fire hits you have an even further shortage of that. So, you know, unless you’re really tied in with these people then they’ll cut you right off right when your plants get going real big start to flower right now.”

More at. https://www.laweekly.com/record-wildfires-start-cannabis-industrys-annual-burn/?mc_cid=92be947b60&mc_eid=178dec0b63

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