But as the market began to stabilize in 2022, a new obstacle surfaced by the end of the year: historic storms that hit outdoor farmers in the Emerald Triangle hard. The three counties found themselves on the defensive against another blow to California’s troubled cannabis market.
“There are lots of nails in that coffin,” said Brandy Moulton, a former Mendocino cannabis farmer who was forced to close her grow operation in 2022 after paying about $60,000 a quarter in taxes for three years.
Across the Emerald Triangle, farmers said they have stopped paying their taxes because they can't afford it, and some growers are considering going underground into the black market, where they can set their own prices and avoid the levies.
Last year, California overhauled its cannabis tax structure and eliminated at least one cultivation tax on growers. It also moved the 15% excise tax from distributors to retailers. But that's of little help to Taliaferro, who said he uses nearly half of his income to pay for permits and taxes.
Nicole Elliott, director of the California Department of Cannabis Control, said, “There is still a lot of work to do. We acknowledge that.”
Dusty Hughston, of Cougar Ranch Family Farms, inspects marijuana plants with business partner Shanon Taliaferro. Alexandra Hootnick for NBC News
How the Emerald Triangle emerged as a center for cannabis farming
Many communities in the Emerald Triangle were founded by cannabis farmers in the 1960s, when hippies and homesteaders began growing the crop clandestinely under the thick canopy of towering, old-growth redwood, Douglas fir and oak trees.
Once a mecca for logging, Humboldt and surrounding counties blossomed into California’s worst kept secret, producing what became the gold standard for cannabis not just in the state but across the country.
A legacy farmer born into the cannabis trade, Taliaferro, 50, grew up in the Humboldt mountains. His mother moved to the area in 1974 and started a small pot farm tucked deep inside the forest.
“It was just us against The Man,” Taliaferro said of his childhood.
In 1996, Taliaferro was arrested during a law enforcement "green sweep" while transporting seven cannabis plants. He said his "unjust" arrest and three years of probation made him decide to dedicate his life to growing weed as an act of defiance. During his probation, he learned building trades that would become the foundation of his future cannabis businesses.
Those trades have allowed Taliaferro and his wife to diversify their incomes. Without his rental properties, livestock and cannabis retail and distribution operations, Humboldt Homegrown and Green Ox, Taliaferro said he is not sure he could survive by just growing pot as he did when he first got into the industry and black market marijuana was going for $5,000 a pound.
“It’s really hard to make it,” he said. “With the price of herb going down and the price of everything else going up, it really does feel like the corporate world has a leg up. It’s really hard to compete against that.”