An interesting marketing concept: You've got a fresh, organic, locavore vegetables brand and you're going to put it on 100 different products made from extracted THC. Supposedly, these highly processed plant-based items will retain the vibe of the fresh plants. Somehow, in the mind of the marijuana-user, the plant will have aspired to freedom and truly achieved it, because it was outdoors, but it's been machine-transformed — how, exactly? — into a substance trapped — imprisoned — in in vape cartridges and edibles. Where is the freedom? Where is the fresh, organic, locavore vegetables concept? It's all in the mind... and the label and the brand.
February 17, 2023
"In the organic vegetable world, Hepworth Farms, in Milton, N.Y., is a regional power player, a name brand in everything from lettuces to leeks..."
"As grass-roots organic growers go, Hepworth is as pure as they get.... Amy Hepworth, who took over the farm in 1982, was once the subject of a glowing New York Magazine profile, calling her a 'cult hero' to the city’s locavore set.... She and her identical sister, Gail Hepworth, run the business together, and this year, in the farm’s 204th growing season, they added marijuana to the mix.... Across the United States, [cannabis] is grown primarily indoors, where farmers can control variables like light, temperature, airflow and humidity.
Amy Hepworth finds this arrangement repugnant. The plant 'wants to be free,' she said, and it can reach its fullest potential only in natural sun and living soil. 'It is a plant, and it belongs in agriculture,' she continued. 'People say you can’t grow it outside. Well, I beg to differ.'... [L]ast May, they partnered with Pura Industries, and they have] invested heavily in machinery to extract THC, the chemical found in vape cartridges and edibles; they are processing not just their own harvest but also those of other growers in the region. Mr. Lasser is developing more than 100 different retail products.... The hope is that Hepworth’s brand in vegetables — which stands for quality and sustainability — will translate to New York’s marijuana buyers...."
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Well, it isn't as though the marijuana users or the "organic" vegetable consumers are well known for their logical consistency or intelligence. It should work out well for the identical sisters (not twins?).
The plant 'wants to be free,' she said, and it can reach its fullest potential only in natural sun and living soil.
which, is WHY we then chemically extract the chemicals from the weeds, and insert those chemicals into sugar candies that are made with processed corn sugar.
We SO BELIEVE in organic plants, that we are using those plants as raw material for our chemical process
As Old and Slow points out.. The WHOLE "organic" thing is a scam.. A scam for stupid people.
Want an example? Maple Syrup is now called "organic" Maple Syrup, because you don't spray Maple Trees (since they don't have pests, or need fertilizer.
In Florida, the tomato farms transformed into marijuana farms now have electrified, barbed-wire fences, alarms,spotlights that disrupt the neighbors, and increased crime. Very peaceful and free, indeed.
The Dominican, El Salvadoran, Mexican, and Guatemalan gangs are still importing illegal and drug-enhanced marijuana daily from the charter busses that run several times a day from my small hometown there to Mexico and back.
Gang murders have increased in frequency, especially among the Dominican gangs. Laws abiding members of those communities who came here legally decades ago to farm are enraged and scared for their children.
Check back with us on that peaceful organic farm in a year or two.
"It's all in the mind" applies not only to the "organic" THC, but to everything they produce. "Organic" is simply a mind-game by which you extract nearly twice as many dollars for the same food products, while costing nature the extra overhead of more land in production for less food per acre. No health benefit whatsoever.
Sri Lanka figured that one out the hard way, with mass starvation. Between the organic fetish, and the climate-change religion, we're going to be starving way more people in the near future. I guess that's how you get people to eat more bugs.
I had to lookup locavores. It must be part of the lingo of the Whole Foods devotees. How are organic farmers struggling with so many people hitched to the organic lifestyle?
Where is the freedom?
Where is the fresh, organic, locavore vegetables concept?
Where’s the pumpkin pie?
— Peppermint Patty, Thanksgiving 2023
Is their bank still working with them? Do they still get a line of credit and small business loans? Can their customers pay them with a credit card? I know physicians whose credit card vendor closed their business merchant account just because they medically certify marijuana. The financial industry sees it as illegal activity because it violates federal law, and they don’t want to risk being on the wrong side of the Feds.
AS the chemist in our little group, the idea that you have to grow plants to create THC is ridiculous. Almost every botanical is recreated in the lab with precise reactions. My first experiment in Organic Chem was to make Methyl Salicylate. For those who do not know the chemical name, this is oil of wintergreen. I smelled like BenGay for a week.
We did nicotine from Cigars, Caffeine from Coffee Grounds, and my personal favorite, Cholesterol from Gall Stones(they really look like stones). All but the Cholesterol we then synthesized from chemicals rather than natural substances. We also made all the synthetic aniline dyes. These were teaching experiments - not exactly cutting edge stuff.
There is NO need for pot farms. The process for making THC is WELL KNOWN. This is just an avenue for pot legalization.
Remember when dark colored berries were found to be healthy, so it was assumed that the juice of those berries was just as healthy? Not so, as it turned out.
Tegridy!
This whole thing ois a bug waiting for a windshield.
As an agronomist, one of my specialty areas has long been Cannabis production, going back more than 40 years to cross-breeding Thai and Afghani strains, and teaching cold-climate pot-heads to graft it onto hops roots for better production. More recently, here on my farm in Kansas, I grew 12 acres of medicinal [=floral] Cannabis. All along, I've not only been an organic veggie grower [35 acres], and developped some of the very first organic certification standards and systems, but also inspected nearly a million acres (in 11 countries) for organic certification. I've seen and done a lot over a long and satisfying career, but, oddly I suppose, have never had a single toke or taste of "weed".
I wish the sisters well, but professionally have significant doubts about their "line extension" project. On the positive side, because there are no chemical herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and such registered for use in Cannabis production, their experience as organic growers will be tremendously helpful. Their local reputation may also help. HOWEVER ...
a) their northeastern climate works very much against them, generally being too wet at harvest time and subject to sudden and untimely freezes
b) fertility, particularly nitrogen and potassium are very tricky to manage using the fertilizers available for organic producti -- and Cannabis is *very* fussy about such things -- so they're stuck with those or they lose certification for three years AND fall into an audit-trail horror show if they grow the same crop(s) "organic" and "conventional".
c) in that climate, fungal diseases, particularly Sclerotinia are a genuine and potentially devastating threat
d) the seed business for Cannabis, even medicinal hemp, is filthy, corrupt, and utterly dishonest beyond belief, and unlike veggies, good quality seeds can cost 1 dollar each -- IF they are what they say they are, and IF the vendor doesn't just take the money and run.
e) MALE plants are an ever-present problem, and if you miss removing a single boy, he can scatter well over 10 million grains of pollen all through your "grow", which then seeds out and becomes worthless. All it takes is a couple of "volunteer" male plants from some doper's woods-meadow grow a mile away last year and your crop is screwed.
f) the crop remains ILLEGAL at a federal level. The sisters might wish to understand how forfeiture works before going to far into this.
g) BANKS are incredibly hostile to Cannabis and will close your accounts -- it's buried far into the Terms of Agreement -- and not just your business accounts, but also all personal accounts of shareholders in a privately-held corporation associated in any way with Cannabis, even perfectly-legal hemp. It happened to me personally, on 72 hours notice, less than 3 years ago.
h) ADVERTISING that you're getting your successful business into marijuana is both naïve and stupid.
i) I also sense that this is their first year, both of production and marketting, without any trials at very small scale to develop and perfect production, processing, and marketting systems.
Not a promising situation, but farming's always great in January.
I am not a user of this product in any of its forms.
I hear a story like this and I think of the rats who will starve themselves pressing the lever for the endorphin release stuff rather than the lever for food. There are already too many things in my world to which I feel unhealthily drawn and against which I have to fight daily battles large and small - I don't need more.
It sounds as if these farmers are, if not actually giving up on food in favor of consumers' pleasure centers, certainly prioritizing the latter over the former. And are willing to compromise the holy principles that led them into "organic" farming in the first place, just for the unholy buck. I thought capitalism was part of the suite of unacceptables in the world of organic-everything.
I'm not arguing against capitalism! I have reasonable confidence that enough individuals will decide that their money is better spent on the food lever than the endorphin lever to keep our society from collapsing into sleepy-eyed lethargy, and that enough farmers will keep growing actual food - not pot, not almonds, not biofuel fodder, not wine grapes - to, you know, feed us in response to our demand for food. But I do not understand the Venn diagram here, in which the "clean eating" people overlap with the compulsive Fritos consumers.
Milton is almost 200 miles from New York City. Locavores are stupid.
The argument for hydroponics was that it increased yield per ft2 and utilizes fewer resources…and also that you could grow discreetly
Homer Simpson made a killing growing ToMacco. Just suggesting…
An old and true carny, grifter slogan is still true:
"Baffle 'em with bullshit"
gilbar said:
"Maple Syrup is now called "organic" Maple Syrup, because you don't spray Maple Trees (since they don't have pests, or need fertilizer."
85 percent of the world's maple syrup comes from three river valleys in Québec, and I ran maple operations in two of them, so allow me to correct you. Maple trees can be heavily attacked by both budworms and tent caterpillars. The "organic" response is both easy and effective -- a natural bacterial insecticide known as Bacillus thuringiensis, but it's considerably more expensive than the chemical alternatives.
Fertilizing maple trees ia not standard but it does occur, particularly for phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium.
More important is la pillule "the pill", a fungicidal and bactericidal tablet routinely placed into every tap-hole before the pipeline hammered in for the season to prevent spoilage and fermentation of sap in the line. Each tap produces about 1 quart of syrup in a season. Each quart contains all the chemicals of one pill.
If the plant "wants to be free", it also wants to be unsmoked or unground-up in a brownie.
Some decades ago, a friend and I accompanied another friend to his friend's house, where he had been invited for dinner. The house was the home of one of Los Angeles' largest produce merchants. Since we were not the "friend" invited for dinner, we were asked to wait in the living room while our friend ate with the family who had invited him. We were not offered food, drink, or entertainment. What entertainment we derived was listening to the conversation at the dinner table, which consisted of the home's owner (the produce merchant), bragging about his recent decision to engage in the sale of "organic" produce at a price nearly double that of his regular fare. The "organic" produce apparently consisted of the "seconds" of the regular product; that is, the bruised fruit, wilted lettuce, and merchandise otherwise not fit for "ordinary" sale. The merchant was PROUD of his "marketing" expertise, and his ability to make nearly twice as much on product that would ordinarily have been THROWN AWAY.
The capper on the evening was listening to the proud produce magnate describe the difficulty of getting his oldest son into a "good college, when all the scholarships are going to the schwarzers" while the black maid was serving the meal.
I've never knowingly bought "organic" food since.
Not to mention that the plant is hardly natural. It's been selectively bred over hundreds of generations to have many times the THC of natural cannabis plants. In fact, almost all of our food plants have been bred to be very different from their original natural versions.
Here's What Fruits And Vegetables Looked Like Before We Domesticated Them
Thanks, Bart!
Your point "e" is what I thought was the reason why marijuana is best grown indoors. I don't think the article I'm linking to mentions that problem.
The article reeks of old-timey you-go-girl mainstream lightweight feminism.
It does come across that the sisters are going in this direction because the vegetable farming business isn't doing well.
It's like PETA, except for plants! By the way, plants hate being smoked.
@Roger Sweeny, 9:39:
It's why I always chuckle at those who say they "avoid GMO products"...
The vegetables from my CSA taste better than the ones in the store. I don't actually think it's the "organic" growing, rather, I suspect that they're picked closer to ripeness because they don't have to be transported very far. I could be wrong.
Organic fruits and vegetables from the store don't seem to taste different in my haphazard sampling with one notable exception: Bananas. Organic bananas taste better and are pleasant to eat over a longer period of time (i.e. they taste good farther into the greener and browner ends of their shelf life-cycle). I do not know why this is.
Blogger Jamie said...
"I do not understand the Venn diagram here, in which the "clean eating" people overlap with the compulsive Fritos consumers."
And yet, weirdly, there is a huge overlap between these two groups. As I mentioned previously, neither group is well known for logical consistency or intelligence. Though, of course, there are many fine people among them... . That goes without saying.
Bart Hall is certainly right about the New York climate being totally unsuitable for outdoor cannabis farming. However, since their stated intent is to extract the THC and use it in other products, maybe that doesn't matter so much. They could place no emphasis on floral quality and just mass produce seeded plants from decent high THC seed stock that breeds true. They would never have to buy seeds (they'd have plenty!), and could just plant a couple hundred acres and let it rip. No careful cultivation required if the plan is to process out the active components. The loss of banking will certainly be a game changer though. Better buy a big bank vault and some guns.
Speaking of banana ripening, did you know that Ireland is the largest producer of bananas in Europe? They import vast quantities from the Americas and ripen them in Dublin warehouses. For tax purposes, they are considered by the EU to be Irish agricultural produce.
(I see now that Slovenia may have overtaken Ireland as a banana producer. I don't believe it though)
Tina848 said...
As the chemist in our little group...
If it has a carbon atom in it somewhere, it is "organic".
Stan Smith said...
What entertainment we derived was listening to the conversation at the dinner table, which consisted of the home's owner (the produce merchant), bragging about his recent decision to engage in the sale of "organic" produce at a price nearly double that of his regular fare. The "organic" produce apparently consisted of the "seconds" of the regular product; that is, the bruised fruit, wilted lettuce, and merchandise otherwise not fit for "ordinary" sale.
Forty years ago I worked for a family-owned produce company. As part of a pilot program, the owner got some shipments of organic produce. He kept throwing half of it away, saying "this is junk; our customers will never accept this." That pilot program ended quickly.
"In the organic vegetable world, Hepworth Farms, in Milton, N.Y., is a regional power player, a name brand in everything from lettuces to leeks..."
I expected far better of the NYT headline writer. S/he missed a golden opportunity. "Everything from lettuces to leeks..."? Who in their right mind wouldn't have written, "Everything from asparagus to zucchini" or some form thereof?
If you're stupid enough to pay high prices for "organic", you've demonstrated you're stupid enough to think you're buying super "grass" because of a name.
"Everything from lettuce to leeks" doesn't go very far - alphabetically. Pretty narrow range of produce to produce.
"Everything from lettuce to leeks" doesn't go very far - alphabetically. Pretty narrow range of produce to produce.
Ann: “… Where is the fresh, organic, locavore vegetables concept? It's all in the mind... and the label and the brand.”
Well put. People have always bought the sizzle, not the steak. IOW, what they want is to fill a hole on their side of the transactional space. It may or not correspond to what is being offered to fill it from the other side of the space. Tight correspondence = happy customers but possibly far fewer. Loose correspondence = more buyers but more complaints.
Maybe they could introduce a new line: organic veggies raised in fields with piped-in New Age music and regular infusions of THC.
Were they selling organic vegetables because they are healthier for their customers?
Do they think getting their customers stoned is healthier for them?
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