Survey: how many New York cannabis farmers are planting again this year?

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While new cannabis dispensaries are popping up across New York State on a weekly basis, licensed Adult-Use Conditional Cultivators are still sitting on a massive amount of unsold product from last year’s harvest.

As retail outlets continue to open, a big question that’s circulated over the past several months within the state’s industry is whether these same growers intend to plant again this year – even if most of their prior harvest is unsold.

NY Cannabis Insider emailed an informal survey to nearly all the 280 AUCCs on Monday to ask them three simple questions:

Did you plant a cannabis crop last year?
Have you planted this year?
If not, do you intend to?

So far, we’ve received 32 responses – or more than 10% of licensees. Though the results are in no way scientific or a definitive representation of the whole cohort, all respondents said they intended to grow again this year (or are already growing).

“That checks out with what I’ve been hearing,” said Brittany Carbone, a licensed grower, founder of Tricolla Farms and board member at the Cannabis Association of New York

“I think that’s the reason why people are pushing it this year … there is a market that’s already existing,” Carbone said. “That’s the difference between this year and last year: we know there are about 20 retail outlets right now, and they’re coming online at a faster pace.”

However, many respondents said they were scaling back this time around.

“We only put 500 plants in the ground to minimize potential losses,” said Laura Swatsworth of Chessworth Farms, a woman- and veteran-owned cannabis farm in Jefferson County.

“Most processors we have spoken with are only interested in processing biomass into distillate for farmers and not into final products (i.e. gummies, vapes),” Swatsworth said. “Sitting on liters of distillate with no outlet is unappealing. So our only outlet is to sell whole flower and flower products.”

Seth Jacobs of Slack Hollow Organics in Washington County also said he was cutting back on the size of his operation.

“We are not maximizing our acreage this year,” Jacobs said. “There’s no need to grow a crop for processing into extract.”

“We’re sitting on a year’s supply,” he said.

Others, though, are expanding.

“We just started harvesting our first greenhouse crop of the year (about 1,000 plants),” said Mike Dulen, co-founder and CEO of A Walk in the Pines.

“We’ll then have another crop started immediately. We have also planted over 7,000 plants outdoors. We have a unique business model where we lease another outdoor acre from a licensed farm down the road. We pay for all costs, labor, etc., and kick them a small percentage of revenue. That farm wasn’t going to grow this year, which allowed us to expand our operations and generate more revenue.”

Carbone, from Tricolla Farms, added that at this point, “It’s really difficult to be selling last year’s harvest.” So, she said, “the general sentiment is, ‘let’s get a fresh harvest – there’ll be more stores coming online, and we’ll be able to sell there.’”