The California Legal Market continues to fluctuate rapidly and now with a current glut of flower availability farmers are finding it difficult to move their top buds at fair prices. This is only the beginning now that Croptober is here. Huge canopies of top quality outdoor harvests are coming down and will start hitting the market in late November. Naturally this will cause further downward price pressure as competition heats up for dominant market share of retail buyers.
An interesting development that no one expected is the ongoing shortage of Trim. An astounding number of Manufacturers have opened up shop and are tooled to process thousands upon thousands of pounds of material on a weekly basis. Many processing machines are sitting idle in the midst of the material shortage. In response some of the larger manufacturers have introduced a different option for farmers.
The new model is converting your entire canopy or a portion as biomass to distillate and splitting the profit. With a 3 to 6-week turnaround time for full payout and minimal processing labor this option is looking better and better for those who need to turn their crop into cash and don’t feel like dealing with the headache of the legal flower market. Even more appealing is, those farming in regions that don’t experience frigid temperatures or excessive rain in the winter can grow auto-flower strains year round for biomass.
Let’s take a quick rough estimate look at the math behind this based on a 10,000 square foot canopy. Using the traditional model, a farm ends up with roughly 1200 lbs. of flower and 600 lbs. of trim. On the open legal market outdoor flower is worth around $700 and light dep flower fetches around $850 with trim currently going for around $96. This gives you an accumulated material gross worth of around $800,000.
Now let’s examine the costs associated with the traditional model. The first stage of harvest of cutting down the plants and processing them into manageable branches for dry hanging can be accomplished in roughly a week with a full crew of 7 to 10 laborers surmounting to around $10k in labor. The trimming stage average rate is $100 per pound adding another $120,000 to upfront costs. Now let’s add an additional $30k for your trim team’s room, board and harvest supplies landing your upfront processing costs to around $160k. Then you will need to market and brand on the open legal market to sell your flower to distribution centers which is currently highly competitive and over supplied.
With the new biomass model the same 10,000 sf canopy will produce around 1800 lbs. of biomass. As long as you grow a quality product that can average at least 14% THC with 60/40 split the farm is looking at around a $400k payout in 6 weeks with only upfront harvest labor of around $10k and no trimming! Also no branding or marketing and no headache of making multiple deals over a long period of time. Everyone has to do what makes sense for them. If you’re interested in exploring a Biomass deal option, contact Peter (415)-940-2770 or Sean (415)-683-8601 at Kush Marketplace for details.