I am good friends with someone who has worked as a grower for over ten years. They were in CO in 2010 when dispensaries were more like farmers markets, where numerous home growers were able to sell their products and have them put on the shelves. Things changed when the state congress made rules that forced shops to grow at least 70% of what they sold at retail, leaving the other 30% for inter-dispensary business dealings--this was to allow for shops that had supply issues with their 70% to buy stock from other legal producers/retailers. No one in their right mind would go ahead with that business platform and aim to just produce 70%, they would shoot for 100% and buy wholesale whatever they failed to produce themselves. This pushed out hundreds of smaller scale, yet highly talented, growers in the state.
The result of these news rules and laws was that, as usual, the people with all the money held all the power and control. Not only that, but everyone and their mother was running around plastering "master grower" next to their name--as if that title actually means anything to anyone beyond themselves. "Master" growers who failed to demonstrate said mastery over production of cannabis were sacked, and from then on no one who claimed to have expertise at growing cannabis was to be taken seriously. This, combined with the ever growing presence of big money men and power brokers from the financial and (legit) business world, led to the shop owners--who by then were investing upwards of a million dollars in their operations--to seek out consulting firms who were apt to implement a new system whereby unskilled, underpaid labor was utilized to the maximum degree while the consulting firm brought in a skilled worker to help institute protocols and procedures for said unskilled labor to run turnkey warehouse operations. You know, like a McDonalds franchise does.
The second reason why almost all shop weed is terrible is because these consultants seem to have convinced everyone that hydroponics is a waste of time and money, and that profit margins will be better with lower tech, lower effort, lower-quality-producing soil methods. My friend is not sure if this is actually true, because we have yet to see any scientific comparisons of the very few shops utilizing the hydroponic methods versus the shops utilizing cheaper, more basic soil methods.
It is within a scientific consensus of anyone who has ever read a book about botany or plants that hydroponic growing methods are far superior to that of basic earthen soil methods. The difference in the amount of water needed per gram or pound of yield alone between the two methods is significant enough that large companies like Cargill virtually only use hydroponics--a Rockwool medium, specifically. The other significant advantage of hydroponics is the rate of growth over time: a plant grown by hydro methods will outgrow a soil plant when given the same amount of time and light. This means shorter vegetative periods for the same amount of yield. Or, it can mean a much larger yield over the same amount of veg and flower time as the soil plants. Either way, it means more for less. Whether it adds up to more than the amount the big shops save by cutting corners--as hydroponic methods require slightly higher equipment and labor costs--is yet to be determined. But one thing is for sure: the quality can suffer when corners are cut.
Quality is determined by two factors, which are not equal in their influence over said quality. The first, and most influential, is the genetics of the seeds/clones being used for the garden/crop. You can pull all the grower tricks out of you hat that you want, but if you are using bad genetics, you will get bad buds. There is no way around that fact. But if you have strong genetics, it is still up to you, the grower, to make sure those awesome genetics are provided with everything they need to flourish--just like you would with your own child. Just because your own kid has great genetics doesn't mean you can't totally mess him or her up forever by being a horrible parent. Good husbandry is the second factor, and although it can never be as significant as genetics, it is still very important in the grow room. Or so I am told by my friend.
This is all par for the course of our capitalist system. As many have mentioned in this thread, these people are not out to produce a fine cannabis product, they are out to produce as much product as they possibly can, because the demand in CO and other legal states far outruns the current supply. I do think that eventually, once interstate commerce comes into play, there will be a reckoning in the legal weed industry in terms of quality control. There needs to be a free(er) marketplace in order to ensure that industry wide quality control, by way of consumer voting, is possible. When the marketplace is quasi-legal and almost wholly controlled by wealthy elites from Wall street and the Silicon Valley, quality control is whatever they say it is. Which is to say that, right now, quality control doesn't exist at all.
And not all of the shops are run by total morons who only care about making their bank account swell. A very select few of them also care about providing a higher quality product. But you better be sure to expect a much higher price for the type of weed that sparkles in the sodium lights.
