Growers in upstate New York are figuring out how to keep a glut of weed fresh as the state stalls on retail licenses.
By almost all metrics, New York’s cannabis market rollout should be in the final innings. The state began handing out growing licenses to more than 200 farms last spring and farmers have since sowed seeds, tended to rows of plants all summer, and just in the last few weeks, finished harvesting. Now, hundreds of thousands of pounds of weed — worth hundreds of millions of dollars — is ready to be sold at dispensaries.
There’s one hitch: Instead of being shipped to retail stores, the weed is just piling up. Though a rampant gray market is already up and running, not one legal recreational dispensary has yet opened in New York, despite the state regulator’s repeated assurances that cannabis stores would be a fixture by the end of this year.
The languishing stockpiles — estimated to weigh around 300,000 pounds, according to the Office of Cannabis Management — pose a host of problems for farmers, not least of which is that over time, cannabis can deteriorate. Based on an average estimated wholesale value of about $2,500 per pound, according to Cannabis Benchmarks, a research firm that tracks wholesale marijuana prices nationwide, the hoard could be worth as much as $750 million.
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