
‘Dead Skunk’ Stench from Marijuana Farms Outrages Californians - jelliclesfarm
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/california-marijuana-stink.html
======
beat
Ultimately, this is an ordinary agriculture problem. The media will be all
"WOOO POT!" about it because it's new and controversial, but the odor problem
is the same problem you get from all sorts of farming practices, some of which
smell considerably worse than even a big pot farm (which is pretty stinky).
It'll get solved the way all such problems get solved - zoning. Same thing
that keeps you from having a hog farm or a chicken slaughtering operation near
people's houses.

I don't expect grow operations will ever hit the scale of other agriculture,
either - there's just not enough demand, and legalization isn't going to make
some order-of-magnitude change in that. When I was in Colorado this spring, in
a small town way up in the mountains, my host pointed out multiple well-known
growing operations in various buildings in town. All hydroponic, indoor
farming, so the light and temperature and water can all be controlled. Easy to
air filter that.

~~~
olyjohn
Not to mention, one of the people in the article who is complaining about the
pot lives right next to a stinky dairy farm:

"But she says she made the choice to live next to a dairy farm and prefers
that smell to the odor that drifted over from the marijuana farm next door to
her house."

So it's okay to make a smell if it's one you prefer. If you're some whacko
anti-pot person who thinks that it's going to destroy society, you'll find any
reason to not like the pot.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Well, did she move there before or after the pot farm?

I live out in the country and this issue comes up over and over. People from
the suburbs/city decide they want what they think is a peaceful, bucolic
country life and move to a rural area without learning enough about the area
they're moving to.

And then they find out the farm next door has constant loud machinery noise
when planting or harvest time comes. Or when the wind shifts, you're gagging
because of the smell from the hog lagoon or dairy farm down the road. The
farmers have been there, doing their thing for decades, and they're not about
to stop just because someone moved in and can't deal with the reality of
living near a farm.

Hell, we used to have a neighbor who complained about horses pooping on the
road. Still don't know if she expected us to put diapers on them.

------
awakeasleep
Homeowners have a relatively simple way to fight back!

Simply grow some hemp plants, and kill your females.

High quality marijuana production requires the female plants do not get
fertilized, which means an absence of male plants.

Once fertilized, cannabis puts its energy into seed instead of increased
flowering.

Wind and insects will distribute the pollen to your neighbors, and the plants
will start making seeds instead of stinky flowers.

~~~
hendzen
This sounds like a great way to get murdered.

~~~
beat
These are ordinary legal businesses. They don't murder people, any more than
liquor store owners shoot at each other.

Not resorting to extra-legal means to settle business disputes is one of the
big advantages of decriminalization.

~~~
hendzen
They aren't ordinary legal businesses. It is a fact that they are still
illegal under federal law, regardless of whether you or I agree with that. If
you have ever spent any time in Humboldt County, you would know that if you
don't enjoy being shot at, you should stay away from marijuana grow
operations.

~~~
beat
The federal government is mostly irrelevant here. If they started busting
state-level-legal grow operations in a more than symbolic manner, they'd find
themselves in uncomfortable conflict with state governments. And with states
decriminalizing at a rapid pace, the problem gets even bigger. Eventually, the
federal government will throw in the towel.

As for Humboldt County grow operations... see what I wrote earlier about the
benefits of decriminalization. There's no _reason_ for legal businesses to
shoot at anyone. They're supposed to call the cops when they need someone
shot, and they do. Shooting trespassers at rural grow operations is an
anachronism from the days when that was their only recourse to defend their
business.

------
wwweston
I've got some buyers regret over supporting various decriminalization and
legalization pushes merely over how common the smell has become from the
increased exposure to individual smokers in So Cal. I never considered what
it'd be like to live near production.

I still believe in the principle that the criminal justice system is a poor
avenue for addressing most issues related to drug use. But I think the jury is
still out whether individual users are generally good at being good neighbors
about their use. And industry... honestly, I'd think that an industry that
recently had to hide as much production activity as possible would be better
about this. But monetary incentives are a hell of a drug, and this isn't going
to be the last issue a market oriented society that brings cannabis
industrialization into full fellowship is going to face.

~~~
StrictDabbler
Don't worry. Experience from Washington and Colorado shows that over time
smokers move to vaping and concentrate because it's vastly more convenient
than carrying a bunch of plant matter around.

The vape cartridges and the concentrate wax are essentially scent-free.
Certainly less smelly than nicotine and recreational non-drug vapes.

Industrial production will move out into the country as with any agricultural
or livestock production that has a smell and you'll never notice it. The shit
smell of a beef ranch dwarfs any odor you'll ever get from a pot production
facility.

Cannabis doesn't have a lot of societal overhead.

~~~
c22
How is a vape pen more convenient than a couple of joints? The joints don't
require batteries and after you smoke them there's nothing to carry around!

~~~
StrictDabbler
The pen-style batteries charge from USB and are as easy to carry around as a
pen or, say, a lighter. Do you normally light a joint and discard the lighter?
Are you carrying around one strike-anywhere match per joint?

The user pushes a button, breathes in some vaporized oil, and puts the battery
back in their pocket or bag. It takes about four seconds. A user could do this
in a bathroom, a confessional at church, on a bus or on a train.

It is much easier than setting something on fire, passing it around while it's
burning, and then putting that fire out.

A gram cartridge is about the size of a pen cap, lasts even a heavy user for a
week or more, and doesn't make the user's bag smell like weed.

Are you imagining those giant wizard vapes that are the size of a pack of
cards?

------
djtriptych
James Madison University is located a few miles from a dog food factory and
the entire town smells like it.

Also dead skunk is how you know it's good so... _shrug_

~~~
chipperyman573
I don't smoke, so I may be wrong, but isn't skunk smell a bad thing?

~~~
pizza
Cannabis smell is not the exact same smell as skunk - you can differentiate
between them with your nose alone, and from this one can have a positive
preference for the former (and a negative reaction to smelling the latter..) -
but they both comprise various thiol compounds, so they are both pretty
similar and striking.

Sometimes people think the depth of the scent of the un-smoked weed means it
contains a deeper variety of specific volatile organic compounds called
terpenes. I'm not sure if the distinct aroma-causing compounds make much of a
difference for the end result compared to the cannabinoids, but people use
their nose as a quality estimator this way.

------
jbob2000
This is a zoning issue, not a marijuana issue. Why did the government allow a
greenhouse which was zoned for daises swap to marijuana?

Yes, marijuana stinks. So do slaughter houses and landfills. There's a reason
we don't zone these near residential areas.

~~~
ceejayoz
Is it typical for greenhouses to be zoned for particular individual types of
plants?

------
pessimizer
You have to hope that after legalization producers will stop competing on how
strong it reeks, since we'll all know it's real and won't be evaluating on the
fly. Problem is that it might take generations to breed out the
smellier=stronger thing.

Somebody here has the power to start branding based on being strong but not
smelly; get on it first, you'll find a huge market.

~~~
city41
Will pot consumers like that? I think marijuana smells fantastic, I doubt I'm
alone on that. It's an acquired taste similar to beer and coffee. This would
be like if breweries stopped making IPAs because some people find them too
strong.

~~~
kevinmchugh
The trend for almost five years has been less bitter IPAs. IPAs are still the
hottest trend in craft beer, but the days of one-upmanship in bitterness
stopped around the time Heady Topper gained prominence. Subsequently there was
a rise in "session IPAs" \- usually about 5% ABV and 45 IBUs. In the last two
years, the most hyped style has been the New England IPA. All the hop aroma of
yesterday's 100 IBU Double IPA but with half the bitterness.

------
sirmike_
I wonder if this is worse than living near a hog farm?

~~~
TheBill
As a former resident of Indiana, no, it's not. Different, yes, but nothing is
quite as bad as a holding pond at a hog farm on a hot summer's day.

~~~
Yetanfou
Oh yes, there are worse things: chicken farms. Hog farms are certainly smelly
but chicken farms are... disgusting in a way all of their own, a nauseating
smell which makes you glad you did not eat a big lunch. I've lived on a (small
scale) hog farm - studying at an agricultural university, being in need of a
place to live and finding a farmer who had a cabin on his farm ready for rent
leads to such - and have cycled through areas with chicken farms.

I studied forestry and know what I prefer on a hot summer's day, the orangey
tang of a Douglas fir stand or the resinous smell in a pine forest on sandy
soil are infinitely preferable over both hogs and chickens. Or weed, for that
matter.

~~~
russh
I'll never forget the first time I smelled a soggy goat farm on a hot day.

------
tareqak
I've wondered if whether the decriminalization and/or legalization of
marijuana would eventually lead to people selectively growing strains that
don't smell as strong. I guess that it's not a priority for the people that
partake, and therefore not a priority for the producers.

~~~
vilaca
I believe low smell would be prefered for illegal grows as it attracts
attention.

------
cronix
Easily controlled via requiring growers to use carbon air filters. They are
quite effective. It obviously won't help with the outdoor grows, but most
grown in cities isn't grown outdoors.

------
tdmat
its no where near as bad as a paper mill

~~~
teachrdan
I think that's the point, though: legal marijuana farms are an industrial
process. The fact that we can put them in the same category as a paper mill is
noteworthy.

I'd agree that they're less offensive to the sense of smell than paper mills,
or dog food manufacturing, or any number of other large scale commercial
operations. But now that recreational marijuana is legal in so many places we
have to consider (and regulate) it like the industrial process that it is.

------
stuarthannig
I went to college in Kenosha, WI (North of Chicago, South of Milwaukee) -- and
they have cabbage patch farms around the area.

The stench coming from those farms, woowee!

------
hprotagonist
activated carbon ventilation filters, maybe? The world’s biggest sploof.

open-air farming is harder to handle. I grew up a few miles away from a pig
farm, and late august was unavoidably...special. You get used to it, but the
first hot end of summer day was a salient experience.

------
mindslight
Those specific respirator filters only do light organic vapors (as opposed to
say the 3M 6001 cartridge), so the smell can't be that bad.

(Or you know, leave out the hyperbolic pictures.)

