That is not a drug; it’s a leaf. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
Aside from offering a slight helping
of food for thought, is my first vegan blog. I’ll verbally taste a plateful of
two quite dissimilar and sometimes organic green plants that made the news
recently. The first one I’ll examine, asparagus, is fairly distinctive but lacks public
awareness. It remains an enduring but minor contributor to our overall agricultural
output. The second green plant, marijuana, has a polemic history and far more community standing.
Asparagus is also
called sparrow grass. Humans have cultivated it for several millennia. Its
origins are shrouded in the mists of horticultural history, but include temperate,
often maritime climes in most of Europe and western Asia. Some agronomists believe
an Egyptian hieroglyph from 3000 BCE shows asparagus being grown. Ancient
Greeks ate wild asparagus’ tender shoots. In the West it was the Romans who
first began farming asparagus more than 2000 years ago. Cultivators spread this
triffid throughout their empire. The Sun King, Louis XIV was a big fan, calling
asparagus the king of all vegetables. He had several greenhouses built so he
could eat it throughout the year.
Asparagus has been cultivated in
America since the late 17th century. Hoping to entice travelers to move to his
part of the new world, William Penn advertised that asparagus grew well in
Pennsylvania’s climate.
Growing up in Philadelphia, my
parents apparently were not enticed by Penn’s ancient advert. They did not ever
grow any asparagus in their gardens. But I do remember eating spring asparagus shoots,
shown below, on a semi-regular basis at dinnertime. Yum.
Young
asparagus shoots doing their version of the hula.
I also remember one of asparagus’ signature post-consumption
effects, my urine smelled strange. Asparagus contains aptly-named asparagusic acid
which during digestion produces sulfur compounds in one’s intestinal tract. Hence
the pungent smell. Benjamin Franklin, among many others, characterized this odor
as “disagreeable.”
Only four (4) states account for the
entire US asparagus production. It is a very minor crop in America, just 37,200
tons most recently, which accounts for a trifling 0.09% of all US vegetables
produced. In contrast, China grows about 900 thousand tons of asparagus every
year.
Unlike many other veges,
California isn’t the largest producer of asparagus. Michigan produces 40% of
the total crop, followed by Washington, then California and finally New Jersey.
However, asparagus’ growing season in California is the longest of any state,
from January (in far southern valleys) through mid-June (on the central coast).
Because of dire shortages of
agricultural workers in the US, growers are eagerly hoping that viable, robotic
harvesting machines can take up the slack. As the supply of seasonal agricultural
labor has withered, crops have been plowed under. The reduced farm worker
supply has been caused by multiple reasons. One of which is that exclusions for
using temporary, nonimmigrant H-2A workers principally from Mexico have
increased. In 2019 there were 442,000 H-2A admissions; in 2021, just 258,000.
First attempts at automating crop
harvesting began in the 1950s and 1960s. Abundant challenges have slowed expected
progress in making autonomous, robotic harvesters for commercial produce like almonds,
apples, grapes, oranges, strawberries and tomatoes. For these crops, robotic
harvesting still remains on thin ground.
The Sprout
asparagus harvester
But asparagus’ distinctive and unusual
physical shape may make it a shoe-in for fully-automated harvesting, hence its
recent newsworthiness. Asparagus consists of a single stalk without any confusing
foliage that can styme robotic harvesters. A single plant can produce up to 20
stalks during its 2-month growing season. It is also fast growing – up to 0.8
inches in an hour – so the robot can return in a couple of days in peak season
for another go at the same field, rather than wait for a reappearance next
season. One prototype robotic harvester, shown above, is the Sprout, made specifically
for asparagus. It’s been successfully tested at several locations in the UK. More
US farmers continue to face conditions that lead to giving up and leaving their
fields behind. Could the Sprout help asparagus growers provide a more sustainable
supply? Let’s hope so.
The second green plant under consideration
is marijuana. For at least 2500 years it has been grown for its
psychoactive effects. Originally native to Central and South Asia, its use
spans recreational, medicinal and spiritual purposes. It is the most commonly
used illegal drug in the world, including America.
No matter whether you call it cannabis, kush, bud,
herb, dope, reefer, tea, ganja, grass, weed, head, mary jane, doobie, hash,
bhang or, if you must, pot, it has a far higher public profile than asparagus.
Currently, 19 states have legalized the sale of recreational and medicinal marijuana;
21 states allow only medicinal marijuana to be sold. Eleven hold-out states,
you know who you are, do not allow marijuana of any sort to be legally sold or
grown.
California voters approved
Proposition 64 in 2016 that legalized recreational cannabis; its medicinal use
was permitted 2 decades earlier. Legal recreational cannabis sales began in
2018.
California’s system of reeferegulation
that attempts to control the cultivation, processing and sale of cannabis is exceedingly
byzantine and ultimately based on politicians’ fiscal greed. California’s taxes
on cannabis may mount to 50% of the retail price for consumers, which can make
legal weed a harder sell on the street against some of the world’s best (and illegal)
kush from the Emerald Triangle.
A recent guestimate of the total size
of California’s cannabis market states that the legal market is merely 35% as
large as the black market. Doesn’t sound like California’s legalization has
crushed the mature, well-established unlawful market, does it.
The legal framework established
by Prop 64, together with California’s flawed implementation, have contributed
to continuing problems for legal producers and distributors. One predominant reason
for such problems is centered on Prop 64’s requirement that local governments
must opt in to allow recreational sales to adults. Sizeable portions of
California officialdom have prohibited recreational cannabis sales; 67% of the
state’s jurisdictions still block sales.
At last count, there are only 866
licensed cannabis dispensaries in the state or 1.6 per 100,000 residents. This
low number puts California far behind other states in terms of dispensaries per
capita, one-tenth as many as Oregon. When and where there are no legal
dispensaries, black market cannabis rules at far lower prices.
Experts believe the street price
of an ounce of weed is 50% lower than the taxed, legal weed. No wonder growers
are unhappy, although they’ve known since the very beginning of California’s legalized
cannabis that their products cannot compete purely on price with street weed.
But cannabis spot-prices have steadily
dropped over the past 3 years and more so in 2022, in part because legal
production had increased. Over just the past 2 months, national spot-prices
fell 17%. In California, statements of a legal weed “glut” are commonplace.
Nevertheless, legal weed has
found a valuable niche in California’s cannabis firmament. We’re not talking penny-ante
change here. The state is now the largest legal cannabis market in the world, the
biggest Kahuna, raking in $5.2 billion (B) of taxable sales in 2021, a 17.1%
increase from 2020. Last year, $1.5B in cannabis-related tax revenues were
provided to selected localities and the state. California politicians may be
happy. But other actors in the legal market are not and have made their
complaints clear in Sacramento.
Governor Newsom and the
Legislature’s Democrat leaders finally reached a deal to restructure the state’s
oppressive taxes on legal cannabis. He signed the legislation into law on June 30 that will eliminate the growers’ cultivation tax. In addition, the new law provides
$150 million from the state’s seemingly huge budget surplus to recipients of
this tax’s revenues over the next 3 years as a back-stop for the resulting tax revenue
reductions.
Beyond growers, another key group
of market participants are dispensary owners, including what’s known in liberal
nomenclature as social equity operators (SEOs). SEOs are folks who have
received their dispensary licenses through local programs, like in Oakland, San
Francisco and LA, intended to diversify the industry with more people of color,
formerly incarcerated people and residents of neighborhoods with historically
disproportionate marijuana arrest rates. SEOs represent about 23% of all
cannabis dispensaries in California.
SEOs have been vociferous in
their displeasure with the tax restructuring legislation. After all, issues surrounding
the numerous facets of equity have established a prominent place in the hearts
and minds of true blue Californians, include legislators. The new law provides SEOs
with a $10,000 tax credit and allows them to keep 20% of the excise tax revenue
they collect for the next several years.
SEOs dismissed this benefit as “crumbs.”
They wanted much more, including a complete elimination of the sizeable excise
tax. They thought they would get it, given their cause and the cobalt blueness
of much policy-making in Sacramento. They did not.
The retail price of California’s legal
weed may be reduced a bit due to the new law, but wholesale cannabis prices have
already rebounded from last year’s slump because of increased demand. Meanwhile
the price of asparagus has dropped, due to decreased demand and increased
supply. A plate of asparagus spears and a pre-roll thus offers mixed fiscal
blessings, depending on your taste. What will it be?
