I can count maybe 10…but that is an oligopoly, not a monopoly. However, it’s about who owns the salt mines that really rake in the doe. Funny how that works.
I can spot buy a kilo of isolate for like 1 grand right now, and i can get imported iso for like 700-800 a kg.
Honestly, the united states is going to be pushed out of this market in like 3 years. We cant compete with production cost around the world. Only thing that will be around is the artisan THC Market/subcritical oils.
supply/demand dictate the prices not the damn farmers lol. hell im a farmer and im not ignorant enough to realize this simple facet of economics
Damn, that’s way more than I could think of. I only know Morton’s…
Morton,
San Franiscos Salt Co
McCormicks salt
Malden
Celtic
Thats off the top of my head, i know of like 4 more i cant put names too
The farmers are lost in the sauce. I commend their hard work and courage. But at the end of they day, they may know the least about the industry outside the farm and how it works.
We go to a few farms and labs every week. Right now, we’re touring Oregon. It’s insane. There are farmers with no cannabis experience claiming to have produced 100,000 lbs of “smokable hemp.”
Last year, they grew hay.
You know, and I know, they did not treat 100,000 lbs like it was cannabis; trimming, and curing in the appropriate fashion for a smokable cannabis product. They are trying to sell a product they don’t understand in a market they don’t understand.
We are seeing some movement in smokable hemp. Mostly $150-$250 lbs. CBD shops across America are buying and selling it. But there’s still a surplus.
Niche farmers with cannabis experience using KNF and other biodiverse methods are asking $350-$600 per pound and some are getting it, but those are hand trimmed pounds dried and cured like cannabis should be. It’s moving slow, but it’s moving.
I have smoked some. Its better than the cannabis some states see, but I’m a retired NorCal cannabis cultivator. The flavor is almost as good as Mexican brick weed. lol. The terps seem like they’re there when you smell the flower. But the taste is lacking. Give the breeders time to develop better terp profiles and it may be something worth buying. But as a seller in Texas told me, “We don’t get the real thing around here so people buy this stuff.”
It is a rapidly exploding market. Just not a big enough boom to soak up all the smokable being produced. Most farmers will likely stop growing smokable next year and focus on producing a quality biomass, since that’s the backbone of the market.
They will end up selling their overly processed “smokable” as biomass at $8 a pound come Spring of 2020. Selling hemp as fake weed will only last so long. When the streets catch wind, it will hurt the weed business in those states, as well. People won’t trust buds because they can’t tell if its weed or hemp.
We are seeing $10-$15 a pound for biomass. $1.00-$1.50 per point. We bought over a $1,000,000 in biomass this year, prior to harvest. We were paying $42 a pound. But oil was also selling 60% crude for $1600 a liter. Today, we’re seeing that same crude sell for $750.
Many farmers are desperately clinging to 2018 crop prices and it is a fatal mistake.
The sales they are denying may not come back around and the voids in the market are quickly filled. Not to mention, I think prices will continue to drop. 99% of smokable hemp on the market will not sell. Farmers don’t want to believe this because they have these dreams of $600 a pound on a thousand acres. It’s a pipe dream. Many farmers will not sell their 2019 crop. Ever.
There are farmers who still have 2018 biomass!
You can’t tell them this because they all say, “My friend told me he knows a guy who sold his for $900 a lb.”
They are painfully disconnected.
Many farmers have barely gotten their crops to the barn and don’t even know where prices are. Just before Christmas, when its time to buy presents, they will wake up. Some may not wake up until 2020.
For now, they dream.
I can get a ridiculous amount of 2018 biomass for pretty damn close to free right now…
Well to keep the analogy going Morton’s got to where they are today through vertical integration and absorbing (most) of their competition
I call that stuff compost. lol.
I guess if someone had a lab that wasn’t running 2019 product, they might be able to make some money extracting it, but why bother, if farmers are offering splits on 2019 biomass?
Interesting how bringing all these sellers together in one place, having them incur transport costs, and a lack of consistent testing protocol led to farmers geting the short end of the stick. Good in theory. I wonder if anyone told them this would happen. Hmm.
Mortons is a subsidiary of a mining group called K+S. I have a feeling if dug deeper a-lot of the other salt brands are owned by the same mining group.
I already fell down this Wikipedia rabbit hole today haha. Morton is an American company founded over 150 years ago and is the largest producer of salt in the world - K+S bought them in 2009 for $1.7 Billion, but before that, they controlled each level of the supply chain (I think, I had to stop myself from diving too deep).
Only 1.7 billion?! Lol. 
K+S ran away like a bandit.
Ya fuck you guys and your salt wormholes. I almost got sucked in too
Join us. It isn’t salty enough down here. With the salty attitude @Future the seasoning will be just right 
The state of TN failed miserably to implement the program correctly. After the initial application deadline there were roughly 2000 permitted growers. Then after an unprecedented, non-stop media coverage of how hemp was the new cash crop, the state re-opened the permit process and over 6000 people ended up with a permit. Those of us who got our shit together on time and jumped through what seemed like flaming hoops, had our competition increase by 4000, over night. Moving forward to our first harvest, the dept of ag refused to send an inspector out, citing a shortage in man power. I had to call the state agriculture commissioner and raise hell in order to have them come out and inspect. Once on site, he would not take a sample, saying their lab was down. I’m not F’n kidding, it was like a bad dream. Every step of the way the state of TN has changed the rules or simply ignored them when it suited them. At the end of the day, sittin heavy on some indoor grown, hand trimmed, beautifully worthless nugs.
That sounds incredibly depressing. I wasn’t even there and now I feel like my night has been ruined. Glad I didn’t drive down from KY like you did. Thank you for sharing. Quick, someone cheer me up
There was 6 billion + lbs of cannabis grown in the USA this year.
The fact that we are moving forward to a more cannabis orientated world should bring tears of joy and relief.
changed the rules on processing too… Why tha fuck would a state not want every lab permitted?
Can you ask your friend what happened in the end? Did the farmers ditch or at least lower the reserves? Maybe the last 10 buyers who stuck it out walked away w some affordable biomass…
Today was just the biomass I believe. Tomorrow is smokeable flower and the day after is extracts I believe. But I assume the whole thing is just ruined after day one?