With medicinal marijuana legalized in 28 states and the recent passage of Californias Proposition 64 legalizing recreational use in yet another state, a local professor is examining the ramifications that extend beyond the consumer. Jake Brenner, associate professor of environmental studies and science at Ithaca College, is part of a team that has been working on a study of the environmental impacts of marijuana cultivation in three counties in Northern California that are thought to produce as much as three fourths of the marijuana consumed in the United States. The findings, he says, have been a surprise to everyone involved.
The tri-county cluster of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocinowhere Brenner has focused his studyhave earned the nickname the Emerald Triangle. There, as elsewhere, the so-called green rush followed liberalization of cannabis policy, notably the legalization for medicinal use and permitting of grows to supply permitted patients, Brenner said.
In partnership with Van Butsic and students at University of California Berkeley, Brenner and a small team of five IC students in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences sought to evaluate the impacts of marijuana farming, starting with using geographic information systems (GIS) to spot grow sites from above.
We set out to do what turned out to be the first-ever systematic survey of cannabis agriculture, Brenner said. Our methods were very simple. We gridded the landscape and surveyed a random sample of watersheds, grid-square-by-grid-square, using high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery available in Google Earth.
This was combined with literary review of published studies on the ecology of the area, of which IC student Kent Bueche was in charge mapping the pot grows, while the other half read literary reviews and wrote up summaries. In this way, the IC team was able to conduct research without ever setting foot in California. The resulting study, titled Cannabis (Cannabis sativa or C. indica) Agriculture and the Environment: a systematic, spatially-explicit survey and potential impacts, was published by the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters last April.
What the team found was an astonishing number of marijuana grows causing probable environmental impact that reaches far beyond the expected. As is usually the case when people actually measure in a reliable way a phenomenon that has been guessed-at and measured opportunistically (following raids and seizures) all along, we were astonished by the magnitude of the phenomenon in our study area, said Brenner. The team documented 4,428 cultivation sites, outdoors and in greenhouses, in about half of Humboldt County alone.
While the sites occupied a very, very small land area, they were significantly clustered far from roads, on steep slopes, and in close proximity to threatened and endangered fish habitat. As might be expected, with annual water withdrawals from headwater streams used to irrigate marijuana plants during the driest time of year, it was determined that there are notable risks to those species.
Another issue is that many growers have a practice of placing of rat poison around their plants.
I never knew that rats eat cannabis, said Brenner, but apparently they do.
As a result, rare carnivoresspecifically fish eatersare being found dead due to rat poison in forests where there is no poison to be found for miles; presumably they are being killed because they ingest the poison by eating rats, but researchers had expected the presence of rodenticide to be clustered around areas populated by humans. What they found was that it was widely dispersed throughout the fishers habitat. Perhaps the most exciting finding, said Brenner, and the one that has received very little attention by the scientific community thus far, is that marijuana grows are causing significant forest fragmentation.
Impacts loom large from the common practice of unofficial road-building, Brenner said.
Clearing small patches of forest for marijuana cultivation has a much greater effect on the landscape than previously thought, and this poses a threat to species like the Grizzly Bear, which needs a large uninterrupted habitat to thrive.
The numbers show us that there is, relatively speaking, a lot of fragmentation going on for the amount of cannabis being grown, said Brenner.
At the same time, marijuana farming is much more lucrative and far less disruptive to the environment overall than Californias giant timber industry. Its still illegal to grow weed in California except for just a few plants for medicinal purposes. Though the idea is largely bogus, many people believe they can grow up to 99 plants for medicinal use and avoid prosecution, and Brenner said it was interesting to see how many grow sites had exactly that number. Still, there are no Federal raids these days in California, Brenner said. Marijuana growers are able to drive up prices due to lack of regulations and the drugs illegal status nationwide. Bills recently signed into law in California (Assembly Bill 243, Assembly Bill 266, and State Bill 64) represent a defining moment in Californias history of cannabis production, the study notes, by requiring municipalities to develop land use ordinances for cannabis production, forcing growers to obtain permits for water diversions, and introducing seed-to-consumer tracking.
However, the conclusion of the study observes, bringing the industry into compliance is no small task.
Grows are often located in remote areas, making audits and regulatory enforcement difficult, if not impossible. Cannabis agriculture is practiced primarily by widely dispersed small outdoor producers, and much of the newly proposed regulatory regime relies on self-reporting. Brenners team suspects there is a minimum of 5,000 producers in the Emerald Triangle, and the number may be twice as high. For comparison, there are roughly 400 wineries in Napa County.
IN NEW YORK, A MISMANAGED PROGRAM
In contrast with California, New York State has a very small and highly regulated burgeoning medical marijuana market made legal by the Compassionate Care Act, passed in 2014. Under the law, there are only five companies authorized to produce the drug and each one is permitted to have one manufacturing site and four dispensaries.
At Etain, LLC, a woman-run family-owned marijuana company with a greenhouse in Warren, New York (in Herkimer County) , Keeley Peckham, chief horticultural officer, heads up the growing operation. She said that there are certain state regulations she must stick to but that Etain goes above and beyond to avoid using harmful chemicals, using a method called integrated pest management.
If you see an aphid, you release a ladybug, that kind of thing, she said.
In the event that pesticides are necessary, they are safe for human consumption and dont ever reach the bud of the plant because they are topical, rather than systemic (meaning they are not absorbed into the plant) and they are not applied to the parts of the plant used to make the drug. Its much more expensive than other methods, she said, but its good for branding. In the two years since the family embarked on this venture, which began in a cement barn (where its still located with greenhouses added on), the company has yet to turn a profit.
In November the New York State Department of Health announced a series of potential new legislation that would expand the medical marijuana program. Within the last two months, the DOH filed an amendment to the existing laws that would give nurse practitioners the ability to register and certify patients for medical marijuana, which would in theory give patients greater access to the drug.
On December 8 the DOH announced several other enhancements to the states Medical Marijuana Program designed to improve access for patients, streamline production, increase choice and eventually, help lead to reduced costs. They include allowing wholesaling of medical marijuana products, removing the cap on the number of products available to patients, defining chronic pain as a qualifying condition, and making it easier for hospitals to allow certified patients to self-administer medical marijuana.
While this is generally viewed by New Yorks five distributors as a step in the right direction, one other recent proposal has them worried. A Health Department report published in August recommended that in order to keep up with patient demand the state should double the number of authorized companies growing and selling marijuana. December 8, the New York Daily News reported that it obtained a letter to the state Health Department wherein the trade group representing the five licensed pot producers said the existing growers are sustaining tremendous operating losses and wouldnt survive if the state moved forward with its plan.
This market will be incapable of supporting both current and additional registered organizations until patient participation is drastically increased, the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association wrote in the Nov. 28 letter.
We dont need more growers, said Fred Polsinelli, spokesperson for New York cannabis provider PharmaCannis. He said that the company is using only seven percent of its 130,000 square-foot growing facility located Orange County and is ready and able to keep up with added demand. Were using about seven percent of it because of lack of patient demand, Polsinelli said. For the state to be talking about authorizing more growing capacity does not make economic sense.
As of November 29, there are only 750 physicians registered to prescribe medical marijuana in New York State and just 10,730 patients receiving the drug; more dispensaries would probably be a positive thing, Polsinelli said, but the state should allow the five companies that are currently licensed to grow and thrive before adding more growers into the mix.
If they have to start authorizing more growing, he added, all theyre going to do is turn the industry upside-down. You could see job loss and see the patients get hurt. This is not a free market here. This is a closed market regulated by the state.
MORE GREEN FOR EVERYBODY
Among the very different dynamics of Californias green rush, the economic climate looks very different. Using conservative estimates, Brenners team calculated annual wholesale revenues of $150 million from just the cannabis produced in half of Humboldt County alone. Annual retail value would be in the ballpark of $1 billion, he said. To put this in perspective, this estimate exceeds twice the total value of timber, livestock, dairy, nursery, and vegetable crops grown throughout all of Humboldt County, according to Brenner.
In other words, he said, farmers and timber companies, whose operations cover relatively much greater areas, could do better (by two times) dropping all of that and converting to cannabis agriculture. In a county struggling to sustain rural livelihoods without wrecking the environment in conventional land-based agricultural and forestry activities, cannabis looks pretty good as a means toward rural economic development, and all the land spared by cannabis farms could either stay in, or revert back to, forest.
Legalizing marijuana as a legitimate crop at the federal level would allow the government to put in place industry-wide regulations that would protect both the environment and the consumer, but Brenner says that until cannabis is fully out in the open and regulated its environmental impacts will continue to fly under the radar. Legalizing it would also likely drive prices down, but Brenner wondered if regulations would lead to the rise of organic marijuana, or eco weed. Brands with eco labeling could fetch significantly more on their product.
It has pretty big economic clout, he said, adding that consumers may be willing to pay more to know that there are not unregulated pesticides in their weed.
We have this really great culture, especially in Ithaca, of knowing where our food comes from, agreed Bueche. It would be cool if that happened with marijuana if it was legalized and people could know where it comes from and how it was grown.
He said that the environmental impacts he has witnesses alone are enough to convince him that the government should consider making weed a legal crop.
Growing marijuana, he said, has a lot more environmental impact than people would think.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker
Full Article: Weed Ecology 101
Author: Jaime Cone
Contact: (607) 277-7000
Photo Credit: Casey Martin
Website: Ithaca Times
