May 10, 2001

It would be begging the issue to discuss local economics without including what remains the largest cash crop in California, marijuana. What follows are some highlights from a conversation with an anonymous grower who is still pursuing the pre-growlight practice of guerrilla farming.

Before CAMP, the positive aspects were more apparent. You could go to a trade fair, and marijuana starts were articles of trade. You could visit someone's homestead and they might not have store-bought beer to offer, but they could always roll you a joint or share the pipe. In the past, marijuana money has subsidized volunteer work for restoration and other kinds of community service. There are a lot of positive benefits you don't see because it's an underground economy.

Now with the second generation of twenty-year-olds coming in, it seems that they're not interested in the backcountry. There's been a retreat from growing in the backcountry. People would rather grow off the tailgate or under lights in Arcata because it is easier.

As far as the authorities are concerned at this point, everyone in the Mattole is just a pot grower. What that's delivering to the youth is highly negative. In general the federal government hasn't delivered. They've been treating Humboldt County like a colony. People have been sent here to extract from the garrison (county courthouse). The trick for us as community members is how do we keep from falling into that same pattern of extraction, where people move to town and just come out here to be weekend warriors. Come out here to grow the pot. That's the danger that faces us as a community right now.

Since 1978, almost all of the valley's economy has been based on pot. Now we're beginning to see some "throw-off" from that: the diesel spills, the speed labs and other extensions of the outlaw economy. Despite these things, pot is much more a part of our culture than anyone has stated so far. Nobody wants to talk about it.

You remember what it was like in rural northern California before 1975. We were economically poor people. Cattle. The lower Mattole and Bear Rivers export what – maybe two thousand head of cattle per year? The cow economy is barely holding its own, the timber economy is going and the sheep economy is gone. The salmon economy is but a memory. Restoration doesn't look like it's going populist as a livelihood. Pot is just about all that rural California is left with. We don't make the money we used to in the old economies – not enough to support a family – and we don’t live extravagantly.

I don't think the authorities want to stop it. It supports the prison industry, the police industry, the outlaw industry. Why would the federal government want to stop it? Especially under this administration, I think we'll see a status quo.

In my neighborhood you can see a lot of glorified drying sheds, but you don't see so many orchards or small-scale sawmills, for instance. It's been a big disappointment and it's our cultural ignorance that we grab that cash and go to town and party. The new car is more important than the vegetable garden. Because of the pot economy we see less vegetables grown locally. Yet we should all be grateful -- rural north California lives!



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Table of Contents for Mattole Restoration Newsletter, Issue 16 - Spring/Sumer 2001