Massachusetts’ Most Lucrative Crop Is No Longer Cranberries

What's in a weed? A lot, especially if that weed is "weed," or cannabis.

Don't tell Ocean Spray or the Thanksgiving Pilgrims, but cannabis is now the most lucrative crop in Massachusetts, outpacing the former top crop, cranberries.

As reported by State House News Service, Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commissioner Kimberly Roy recently told pot cultivators in Great Barrington, "What you yield, literally yield, for the state of Massachusetts – you are the top crop, right, you outpace cranberries now as the most lucrative crop in Massachusetts."

The cultivation and recreational use of marijuana is legal in Massachusetts and several other states but still prohibited at the federal level.

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"There are 24 outdoor cultivators in Massachusetts for cannabis, and you guys have about 1.5 million square feet of canopy, of outdoor canopy," Roy told the pot farmers. "That's an average of 62,500 per cultivator."

There are actually 25 outdoor cannabis cultivators in Massachusetts, not 24.

Indoor cultivation also exists in Massachusetts but is much more expensive. SHNS says, "By 2021, indoor cannabis cultivation was responsible for about ten percent of all industrial electricity consumption in Massachusetts, the Northeast Sustainable Cannabis Project estimated."

Outdoor cannabis growers yield smaller harvests than indoor growers but are able to "deploy organic farming techniques and generally produce cannabis flower that is more rich in terpenes and favored by some consumers," says State House News Service.

The Sun Grown Cannabis Alliance, mostly outdoor growers, is asking the Cannabis Control Commission to ease certain regulations that make it more costly and less productive to grow cannabis in Massachusetts.