Why Cannabis Production in Central California Is Primed for a Windfall

Where there’s green, there’s green.

The majority of legal marijuana comes from an area known as The Emerald Triangle in Northern California. Small farms in Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity Counties initially received protections when the state legalized recreational cannabis in 2016. In a stunning move that shook up the industry, the California Department of Food and Agriculture scrapped a planned 1-acre cap on cannabis farms in November. This huge shift will likely benefit another region of California that specializes in multi-acre growth.

According to the Sac Bee, “No place has benefited more from that change than the Central Coast, which covers Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. The region is now challenging the Emerald Triangle—long the epicenter of cannabis cultivation in California—as the state’s capital of commercial weed.

“State records show that the Central Coast had 1,065 cultivation licenses as of March 28, compared to 1,159 in the Emerald Triangle, which is made up of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties and is about the same size as the Central Coast. The two regions account for more than two-thirds of all the cultivation licenses in the state, with Los Angeles, Sacramento and other urban counties taking up most of the other licenses for indoor grows.”

“The supply chain in California is changing,” said Andrew DeAngelo, co-founder of the Bay Area’s Harborside Health Center dispensary and operator of a 4-acre farm in Salinas. “These are seismic changes.”

Read more about Central California’s potentially potent cannabis market here.