An indispensable book on marijuana in the US
Stoa, Ryan (2018) Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry (The MIT Press). (ISBN-10: 0262038862; ISBN-13: 978-0262038867)
Reviewed by Piyush Mathur
Writing against the backdrop of the unfolding marijuana legalization movement in the US, Ryan Stoa starts out by reminiscing his earliest steps on a marijuana farm in California’s Emerald Triangle—“the agricultural heart and soul of the marijuana industry.” His idyllic experiences there echo throughout Craft Weed, which undercuts the American media’s image of domestic marijuana growers as profit-driven, illicit transients constantly being raided by the police for their multifarious crimes. He presents these farmers, instead, as knowledgeable, cohesive collectives that also grow and market other crops; raise animals; stock fish; play music; and/or work as outdoors recreation support.
Early on in the book, Stoa stresses the instability of the nomenclature—personally reserving the term marijuana for the psychoactive strains of the Cannabis genus; and hemp for its non-psychoactive counterparts. So understood, marijuana is (conventionally) divided into the species sativa and indica. Stoa informs us that the American marijuana industry took off as the domestic farmers crossbred these two species following sativa’s introduction to the US in the 1970s. Given that marijuana cultivation does not require even breeding—which is anyway extremely simple to accomplish and easy to replicate—the US farmers’ crossbreeding of these two species was historically significant in ensuring the higher quality of American marijuana.
Cannabis: a global historical sketch
Citing evidence for hemp dating back to 10, 000 BCE in China, Stoa points out that cannabis—probably of an Asian origin and an early human cultivation—were an important, ubiquitous crop in East Asia by 1000 BCE. Closer to our times, Henry VIII of England (d. AD 1547) mandated English farmers to cultivate hemp; and his daughter, Elizabeth I (d. 1603), increased the fine on defaulters. The European empires introduced and encouraged hemp in many of their colonies, including Mexico and Quebec.
While only the Portuguese in Brazil retained marijuana cultivation, hemp cultivation was contractually required for settling Jamestown (founded in 1607). Followed by Connecticut and Massachusetts, Virginia would, by 1619, require every colonist “to grow at least 100 plants” of hemp while also allowing taxes and debts to be settled through it. Subsequently, US hemp industry’s growth would contribute to—and help resolve—the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783); through the ensuing destabilization of state and federal currencies, hemp would also serve as something of “a gold standard” as much as a source of “food, fiber, and fuel for settlers heading west.”
Through the 1700s-1800s, the cultivation of psychoactive strains spiked in South Asia; and over time, three gradients of marijuana came to evolve in India: bhang, charas, and gaanja (which Stoa spells as ganga). Stoa outlines their differences; and details how the British rulers, instead of banning cannabis in India, taxed them in 1790; and in 1793, they “established a regulatory framework to issue licenses to farmers and sellers,” encouraging its decentralization. Meanwhile, following the French campaign in Egypt (1798-1801), many Europeans (including noted Romantics) began to use hashish; and in the 1800s, Greece became a major centre of marijuana cultivation.
Once it is outlawed in Greece in the 1800s, marijuana cultivation moves to the Middle East and North Africa (especially Morocco). Meanwhile, a strong black market would lead the British Parliament to consider banning cannabis in India “in 1838, 1871, 1877, and 1892”—but the lure of the tax revenues from the industry would prevent a ban. Subsequently, a seven-volume, 3500-page Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894-95) would dismiss any grounds for marijuana’s prohibition in India; it would reiterate prior conclusions that marijuana cultivation could not be eradicated and that marijuana has no terrible effects anyway.
The foregoing report was the first government study anywhere to recommend “a centralised marijuana farming scheme” based upon taxes and licenses; this recommendation, however, was ignored—leaving India’s marijuana situation unchanged. Back in the US, hemp production declines in the late 1800s due to domestic crop diversification and hemp imports; but it holds steady entering and throughout the 1900s. In the early 1900s, Mexican labourers would introduce marijuana to the southern parts of the US—but it would not, at the time, become popular in the country; its production would also remain small, despite the continuation of hemp cultivation.
Marijuana prohibition: a history
As to the global history of attempts to prohibit marijuana, Stoa cites evidence—from ancient China, the Christendom, and Islamic societies—to suggest that they have almost always been an elite, ruling-class imposition on the poor or minorities. Ruling elites fear (what they perceive to be) marijuana’s subversive potential as a “spiritual, medicinal, or recreational drug” of a minority group or the poor. However, describing a very different case—of the Bashilange people of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo—Stoa cautions that marijuana prohibition could strike from any quarters.
Regarding the US, Stoa points out that this nation-state did not invent any new prohibitionary tactics; it simply assembled all of the pre-existing ones—and financed and weaponised them to unprecedented scales. Here he draws a poignant history of US federal government’s persistence at retaining marijuana prohibition following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 in May 1969. (The Supreme Court’s decision had effectively rendered marijuana prohibition unconstitutional.)
Stoa details the all-around effects—mainly on the US, but also on Mexico, Colombia, and other parts of the world—of the marijuana prohibition policies pursued particularly by Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. He starts out by presenting the impact of Nixon’s Operation Intercept (September 21-October 10, 1969); Operation Cooperation; and the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) (1970)—which classified marijuana “as a Schedule I narcotic” and mandated the administration to fight narcotics internationally and domestically. He then highlights how the CSA enabled the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to become a violently draconian, unhinged institution—and the long-lasting counterproductive effects of its parquet program (including on the health of marijuana farmers and consumers).
All in all, the DEA’s approach made the drug trade riskier and pricier, leading small “farmers and smugglers” to lose out to large “international drug cartels.” Meanwhile—in 1981, under Reagan—the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act authorized the president to use the military to counteract drugs domestically. As the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the DEA together articulated the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) in 1983, the federal government provided “helicopters, weapons, espionage equipment and intelligence, personnel, and…funding to the state and local agencies …to go after California farmers.”
While detailing CAMP’s brutalisation of California marijuana farmers until its defunding in 2012, Stoa underscores that the farmers would nevertheless raise California’s contribution to domestic marijuana market from around 15 percent to 79 percent during its operation. CAMP has also inadvertently prevented marijuana farming’s monopolisation: California now has “at least 50,000 marijuana farms”—and American domestic market has “thousands of small farms, instead of a few large conglomerates.”
The false prospect of Big Marijuana
Against the above backdrop, Stoa contests the prediction and fear of large-scale corporatization of marijuana—what he terms “the Big Marijuana prophecy.” He insists that large-scale marijuana cultivation would not, in fact, be very profitable or suitable as this plant requires delicate, constant care—which only small-scale farming could provide. There are additional factors that militate against the prospect of Big Marijuana.
Those factors include the fact that marijuana legalization has been unfolding locally and provincially (through the federal ban)—a situation that has helped small farmers gain ground at the expense of corporate players awaiting federal legalization. Domestic demand trends favouring sustainable, healthy, quality marijuana—which large-scale farming can’t profitably supply—are another factor. Then, there is the endless variety of fresh marijuana strains—each with specific farming requirements and a particular consumer base—which discourages the sector’s monopolization. Moreover, marijuana products could be patented based upon many features and their effects; this peculiarity of the plant favours small farmers, who could file a wide range of patents.
Inasmuch as Big Marijuana is an unlikely scenario owing to the above factors, might it yet be a desirable one? Stoa’s answer to this hypothetical question is in the negative. If marijuana farming somehow gets concentrated in a few hands, then this development would render family farmers jobless; harm rural economies; undercut “the craft and connoisseur markets;” reduce consumer choices; and negatively affect the environment and public health. Large-scale farming would also supply aplenty cheap but dirty marijuana, thereby attracting substance abusers.
Meanwhile, inasmuch as a fragmented industry of small-scale farmers may be more difficult to regulate than a tiny group of large-scale farmers, it would also prevent the regulators “from being unduly influenced by oligopolies and their lobbyists.” Small-scale farming of marijuana may also be able to revive “the American family farm.” At any rate, the negatives associated with an otherwise improbable prospect of a Big Marijuana takeover lead Stoa to advise future small-scale farmers to peacefully unite against it—partly by remembering that their predecessors had survived as a community of illegal cultivators that had further shaped America itself as a community.
Big Hemp may actually work out—but that would require sane policies
Unlike marijuana, hemp might in fact be suited for large-scale farming. That is because its harvest requires no delicate care despite being labour-intensive; and its consumers can’t be too particular about its products—which they would use as an “industrial input” anyway (unless “a craft market” for hempseed oil eventually emerges). Citing an estimated domestic market worth $600 million for hemp products (for which the US has been relying on imports), Stoa predicts an early countrywide legalization of hemp farming—despite the DEA opposition to it. This outlook for hemp farming, however, may be damaged by complicated or expensive licensing and heavy taxation—or it may be augmented via subsidies.
Stoa argues that since hemp cultivation was last encouraged in the US during World War II, American hemp farmers need greater guidance and experimentation than their marijuana counterparts—say, regarding suitable strains; they also need a domestically “verified seed stock.” A challenge to the prospect of hemp cultivation in the US is the apprehension that the most profitable hemp strains may get patented, generating a monopoly or oligopoly. Also, cross-pollination between hemp and marijuana strains would have to be avoided to uphold the quality and yield of the either crop, and to prevent legal jeopardy to hemp farmers lacking a marijuana license.
Accomplishing the above, however, would require a close coordination between the two farming communities within an integrated legal and policy framework—except that one cannot foresee it given that prospective federal validation of hemp cultivation precludes marijuana cultivation (which remains federally banned) even as many states’ validation of the same follows their legalization of marijuana cultivation! In this context, Stoa discusses alternative options for future collaboration between US hemp and marijuana farmers.
The history of marijuana legalization in the US
With marijuana being federally banned, the movement for its legalization has been unfolding state-by-state. Uncertainty thus pervades marijuana cultivators, traders, and users—who remain tensed and anxious because federal officials could prosecute them despite their validity within their residential states. This uncertainty is intensified by three additional factors: The federal control itself has vacillated—reflecting different “attorney generals’ attitudes and Congressional funding;” the legalisation movement has been citizen-led rather than government-led; and the politicians have remained risk-averse, opportunistic toward marijuana legalisation.
Lacking a legislative leadership, America’s ruling classes—which have not handled marijuana’s legal circulation since the 1930s—remain unprepared for the unfolding reforms, thereby leaving the states to be unprecedentedly experimental. States, however, themselves remain unclear about regulating marijuana owing to its unusual biology and legal history: Its unfolding legalisation has thus mostly treated it as a product and focused on its civic aspects rather than its agriculture. Moreover, states remain clueless about the implications of the structural imbalances between themselves and the federal government for this decentralized approach to marijuana legalization.
Stoa highlights just one benefit to this policy scenario: It allows local regulatory initiatives to take the political heat off the state legislatures—which may study and adopt the best local practices. Stoa illustrates the above domestic situation based upon many examples. He also discusses some examples of “promising leadership” at the county and municipality levels through the federal marijuana ban—and painstakingly reports the available local means of regulation. Extolling the Humboldt County’s Commercial Medical Marijuana Land Use Ordinance (January 2016), he makes the general observation that the ordinance—which enjoys “the force of law”—is as promising a legal instrument in marijuana legalization as it is hitherto under-utilized. All in all, he advocates ushering marijuana cultivation slowly “into existing agricultural frameworks,” especially by replicating the most successful local approaches around the country.
Unlike the US-based movement for marijuana legalization, the counterpart movement in Canada has been court-led, systematic, and nation-wide. Starting out in 2001 with the Medical Marihuana Access Regulations (MMAR), this movement has institutionalized state-sanctioned monopolistic structures and tendencies in Canada. Stoa provides a calibrated analysis of this regulatory history, which is very much worth reading; but in the meantime, the reader may be assured to know that, with some restrictions, recreational adult usage of marijuana has been legal in Canada with effect from October 17, 2018.
Regarding the future, Stoa illustrates that the joint US-Canada legal purchase of marijuana would most likely far exceed USD 22 billion by 2021. Within the US, the federal ban on interstate marijuana trade and discouragement of large-scale cultivation would keep out prospective “big players” even as local farming communities thrive. The overriding concerns for these communities would be collective self-protection, sustainability, and preferred frameworks of coexistence with hemp cultivators.
Some crucial middle paths
Exploring crucial polarizing technical choices that have been confronting the marijuana community, Stoa typically shows us innovative ways out of them. For instance, differentiating between the cultivation methods of “seeding and cloning,” he clarifies their tradeoffs—pointing to an excellent middle path in “plant tissue culture”: a common agriculture technique that is not well-known to American marijuana farmers. Likewise, he presents an incisive comparison among vertical, indoor, and outdoor farming situations—describing their pros and cons based upon a range of research studies—and suggests the greenhouse as an apt “middle ground” between them.
But Stoa’s most striking futuristic suggestion asks for a broad systemic change; it is offered in the backdrop of his observation that while a plant or its particular type of usage could be patented, only those marijuana strains that have a federally sanctioned usage could be trademarked. So, citing research suggesting the possibility of a terroir for marijuana, he favours setting up countrywide appellations for it. Indicating a product’s region of origin, an appellation legally requires the producer to meet its “geographic or quality standards.” Unlike trademarks or intellectual property rights—which safeguard brand names—appellations “protect and monetize the name of an entire region or group of producers.”
Marijuana appellations, Stoa argues, would discourage inter-regional competition to “produce the most popular generic strains”—encouraging, instead, those strains that best align with local ecologies. While savvy consumers already discern marijuana strains, “terroir may create an additional layer of sophistication” for them. Appellations would thus constitute “a win-win-win for farmers, consumers, and market diversity”—given that “cheap generic stuff will continue to exist” anyway. Absent the ideal of a federal effort at establishing an appellation system—and with California and Oregon having already started taking steps in that direction—Stoa suggests that regions should “adopt whatever marijuana appellation system makes sense” to them.
Given that marijuana’s sanctioned production is considered “a moderate-risk manufacturing industry” by most local jurisdictions, Stoa strongly advocates its federal legalization as agriculture. Stoa’s stance rests upon his argument that federal legalization of marijuana production as agriculture would allow authorities to address its environmental consequences—which are agricultural in nature; the farmers would also then qualify for “insurance or disaster relief;” and marijuana would also become eligible for organic certification under the National Organic Program overseen by the United States Department of Agriculture. Absent the prospect of organic certification for marijuana, its growers currently lack the incentive to adopt healthier, eco-friendlier cultivation; meanwhile, consumers continue to be misled by many labels that attempt to serve as alternatives to organic certification while also competing among themselves.
Prospective environmental issues
Stoa dedicates an entire segment to the environmental dimension of the unfolding marijuana legalization movement in the US. Aside from marijuana’s organic-certification issues, he highlights marijuana cultivation’s atmospheric challenges, resource requirements, and resultant levels and kinds of pollution. Since marijuana cultivation is water-intensive—and laws regarding water use and distribution do not anticipate this sub-sector—water gets most of his attention in this section.
Stoa illustrates that “ambiguities in both water laws and marijuana laws” would ensure that neither of them “function coherently and consistently” once marijuana agriculture truly takes off. So, unless states adjust their regulations, they won’t be able to promote “sustainable, responsible, and legal marijuana cultivation” while also ensuring water equitability. What adds to the water policy’s challenge is its hydrologically unsupportable distinction between water quantity and quality—whereby states regulate water’s allocation while the federal government regulates its pollution. Following a calibrated account of the cascading implications of the foregoing disjunctions in water policy, Stoa concludes that broadly participatory approaches would be appropriate for the marijuana agriculture sector—for the sake of obtaining public’s support for its regulation.
But inasmuch as marijuana’s environmental consequences are agricultural in nature, they cannot be addressed so long as it is not recognized as a crop, in the first place. Co-relationally, as a federally prohibited substance (rather than as a recognized agricultural crop) marijuana cannot be certified organic—since the authority for that certification rests with the federal government’s National Organic Program, overseen by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The above situation is hardly helped by the fact that there is a great, growing demand for organic marijuana—a situation that has led to the outburst of many “third-party certification programs that, while imitating the relevant USDA’s requirements, bypass the term organic—settling for labels such as “‘naturally grown’, ‘Clean Green Certified’, or ‘Certified Kind’.”
As those programmes compete with one another for their perceived dependability, they confuse the market—which anyway continues to have marijuana “labeled and sold as ‘naturally grown’” sans any certification. Lacking effective organic certification, farmers won’t be incentivized to adopt healthier and eco-friendlier approaches to marijuana cultivation—even as consumers would continue to remain confused or misguided. Meanwhile, the lack of federal legalization of marijuana farming as agriculture would also prevent the farmers from benefiting from “insurance or disaster relief.”
As to the objective of ensuring energy efficiency or using clean energy for marijuana cultivation, Stoa draws out for it the implications of licensing, taxation, and smart metering. What he concludes there is that while smart metering would appeal to indoor cultivators, government must sanction outdoor farming—which would also have ecological and economic benefits beyond those related to energy. For, while indoor farmers might struggle to compete commercially without using “chemical fertilizers and pesticides,” their use of the same might weaken their compliance “with stringent testing protocols.” Colorado’s indoor marijuana farming, for instance, has received negative attention owing to heavy pesticide usage.
Conclusion
Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry is a layered, astute work in (futuristic) policy as much as cultural history concerning marijuana in the United States. Informed by a wide range of disciplines, the book displays an impressive grasp of relevant technicalities; it also constitutes a hearty tribute to American marijuana growers and activists. But inasmuch as the book rightly advocates marijuana legalization as the way forward for the United States (and other countries where marijuana remains banned), it does not focus on the medical dimension of marijuana consumption.
For all that, readers must keep themselves current with medical studies into the effects of marijuana consumption. Many such studies find mention in the media; others inform web statements put out by specialized organizations—such as the American Lung Association: https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/marijuana-and-lung-health.html
Piyush Mathur is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017)