MENDOCINO CO., 12/20/18 — California’s new recreational cannabis market is nearly one year old, and it’s been a rocky transition for the cannabis industry, with many former underground farmers struggling to navigate a shifting regulatory landscape while competing in the new market against start-ups funded by Wall Street investors and tech companies. The growing pains of this transition were evident at this year’s Emerald Cup, a competition founded by Laytonville’s Tim Blake in Mendocino County 15 years ago with a focus on organic, sun grown cannabis, billed as the oldest organic medical cannabis festival in the world.
Current regulations have brought changes to The Emerald Cup: family farmer booths have been replaced by distributors, ever more CBD-infused consumables and a wide variety of concentrates; festival goers are now free to smoke without enduring long lines to check doctor’s recommendations, but free samples and goodies are a thing of the past. This year, fewer familiar Mendocino faces were behind the booths, but North Coast farmers dominated the awards, with three Mendocino County farms earning recognition for their regenerative farming practices — and Willie Nelson, who has selected several Mendocino grown strains for his cannabis brand, was given a lifetime award in recognition of his activism in the field.
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