Wine vs. Weed: A Deeper Look Into California’s Cash Crop Conflict

California’s renowned wine and weed industries may seem like a simply lucrative pairing for the state. However, the relationship between these two agricultural enterprises has leaned more toward “it’s complicated” than one would expect, as legal and cultural clashes progressively seed deep conflicts between producers of the profitable commodities.

In today’s post-prohibition era of the California cannabis market, 21st-century winemakers and emerging legal cannabis farms have found themselves at agricultural and economic crossroads, raising questions about whether these two industries can find common ground or if wine and weed are destined to remain on a collision course.

Cannabis farms are on the rise around the famed wine appellations of California, where legal cannabis sales increased by $586 million in 2020 alone. With cannabis industry profits being projected by CannaCon to exceed the value of wine production by an estimated 60 million dollars annually, concerns in many regional wine communities are on the rise, too. Coalitions of vintners and grape growers perceive cannabis farming as a threat to local tourism, wine quality, and brand reputations in regions where world-class wineries have made California the long-standing wine capital of the US.

While some wine producers have taken a rigid stance against the proliferation of cannabis farms alongside legacy wineries and grape crops across California, there are others who have taken an interest in capitalizing on the new opportunities offered by the cannabis industry. According to these optimistic producers, collaboration with cannabis operations through the standardization of proper farming regulations and cultivation methods can even potentially promote the economic interests of vintners in premium wine regions. 

Can these two agricultural treasures of the Golden State coexist in harmony? In the following sections, we will explore the ongoing turf war between two legendary California cash crops, providing a broad perspective on the current conflicts and promising efforts for profitable coexistence between the state’s world-famous wine and weed industries. 

The Controversy of Cannabis Mega-Farms in Santa Barbara County

A decade ago, few would have predicted that Santa Barbara County — best known for its vineyards, coastal charm, and Mediterranean climate — would become home to some of the largest cannabis farms on the planet. Yet today, the county boasts more cannabis acreage than even Northern California’s renowned Humboldt County, the longtime epicenter of the state’s cannabis industry. Santa Barbara’s transformation into a hotspot for cannabis farming took place at an incredible speed, and this explosion of large-scale cannabis growing operations in the region is attributed to a combination of regulatory oversight, exploited legal loopholes, and the central coast region’s excellent growing conditions.

When California voters legalized recreational cannabis with the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016, strict rules were supposed to be enforced to preclude large-scale cannabis cultivation and thus protect small growers from being overrun by industrial-scale operations. So, state law initially imposed a one-acre limit on the size of individual cannabis farms until 2023. 

But Santa Barbara County officials were able to evade such regulations by allowing farmers with large plots of land to “stack” licenses. In 2017, shortly after Prop 64 was passed, the county’s local supervisors began issuing multiple licenses to single growers, allowing certain cannabis business owners to bypass the one-acre rule entirely. For example, this meant that someone wanting to grow 45 acres of cannabis on a 50-acre plot would be allowed to if they obtained 45 licenses. This is how John De Friel of Raw Garden Farm (Owned by Central Coast Ag Farming LLC) obtained around 100 separate permits for neighboring plots of land, creating two of the largest legal cannabis farms in the state.

The lenient licensing practices effectively resulted in an explosion of massive cannabis farms across the Central Coast wine region. Within a few years, Santa Barbara County outpaced the rest of the state in cannabis farm licensing, issuing 35% of all cannabis farm licenses in California by 2020. 

Today, Santa Barbara is now home to 13 of the 20 largest cannabis farms in the state of California. Together, these 13 mega farming operations account for more land than all of Humboldt County’s over 1,000 cannabis farms combined, with the seven largest growers in Santa Barbara County, each maintaining over 1 million square feet of growing space. The state’s largest cannabis farm, operated by Canyon Produce LLC, manages 2.54 million square feet of land in Santa Barbara County. For reference, that’s roughly the area of over 30 football fields.

The economic impact of these industrial-scale farming operations has been comparably dramatic. In 2023, Santa Barbara’s cannabis industry crop production was valued at over $333 million — more than three times as much as the county’s famed wine grape harvest. Local tax revenues on cannabis farming, although in decline, have nevertheless brought tens of millions of dollars to the county’s budget.

However, while cannabis farming in Santa Barbara County has surged in economic significance, winemaking remains deeply embedded in the coastal region’s cultural and economic foundations. When one considers the value of Santa Barbara’s wine industry more holistically, it is undeniable that winemaking is still a profoundly prolific contributor to the regional economy.

Taken together, Santa Barbara County’s vineyards, wineries, and related businesses generate around $1.7 billion of economic activity for the region annually—a number that towers over the area’s cannabis crop value. Santa Barbara’s reputation as a world-class wine destination draws tourists, promotes a thriving hospitality industry, and sustains a diverse network of vineyards and wineries that have established an enduring legacy for winemaking throughout the central coast region. 

Both sectors bring significant value to the region, but now, these two agricultural commodities find themselves in a struggle to reach common ground. Since the rapid expansion of cannabis farms across the county, the wine and weed industries of Santa Barbara have been involved in numerous bitter conflicts over land use, resources, environmental impact, and the potent smell of cannabis. 

With a lucrative and large-scale network of cannabis producers taking root alongside the central coast region’s famed wine appellations, cannabis may now be as fixed in Santa Barbara’s agricultural identity as its world-class wine grapes, meaning that finding a path of coexistence will be essential to minimize further disputes and to maintain the vitality of the region’s agricultural economy and hospitality industry. Moving forward, whether through zoning adjustments, odor mitigation strategies, or cooperative land-use agreements, Santa Barbara policymakers and agricultural business owners are under pressure to strike a balance between the differing requirements and complaints generated by the two profitable industries. 

Wine vs. Weed: How the Two Major Industries Collide

In stark contrast, farther north in California’s famed Napa Valley, local governments and businessowners have been unwelcoming to cannabis agriculture. Napa County — home to around 700 grape growers, 475 wineries, and over 1,000 wine brands — has effectively banned cannabis cultivation within its jurisdiction. 

Napa officials have argued that the establishment of new cannabis farming operations in the area poses a threat to the region’s world-renowned wine industry, both economically and environmentally. As Santa Barbara County continues to manage the unintended consequences of its cannabis bloom, the tensions that have arisen between Santa Barbara’s vintners and cannabis growers serve as a cautionary tale of the difficulties of accommodating these two agricultural industries with conflicting interests. In Napa, by prohibiting industrial cannabis cultivation, local lawmakers and business owners intend to avoid similar conflicts over land use, resource allocation, and agricultural practices and preserve the brand prestige of Napa Valley’s world-renowned wineries. The following sections explore the ongoing cannabis-related concerns among Napa’s vintners, who remain fiercely protective of their industry’s vitality and legacy.

Competition for Land Use, Water, and Labor

Although points of contention between the weed and wine industries are multifaceted, generally both vineyards and cannabis farms must compete for similar resources, such as valuable agricultural land, water, and labor. 

Legal battles over rights to water access have been a particular issue for both cannabis farmers and winegrowers across the state of California. Because an acre of cannabis has been reported to require 1.1 million gallons of water per year, compared to 65,000-162,000 gallons per acre of wine grapes, the introduction of cannabis farms to a new agriculturally active area generates tension between various growers who all rely on the same water supply to support their commodities. 

Another concern facing the wine industry is labor shortages. The average vineyard offers a harvesting wage of around $20 an hour, while marijuana growers often pay $25 to 30 an hour, in cash, for farm work. Such higher pay rates and cash-based transaction systems can make a job in the marijuana industry preferable to picking grapes for many workers, which could consequently decrease vineyards’ labor force or increase the price of winemaking.

Problematic Pesticides

Pesticide drift  (the unintentional transport of pesticides through the air in mist, particles, or vapor) has been identified as a major point of contention between cannabis farmers and winegrowers. Vineyards rely on certain pesticides and fungicides to protect their grape harvests, but tensions arise when these chemicals accidentally make their way onto the cannabis cultivation sites. This is because standards for pesticide use and content are radically different for the cannabis industry versus food crops. 

While food crops have legal tolerable limits on pesticide residues that end up on the final product, cannabis flower is subject to far stricter regulations. California state law prohibits the sale of cannabis products with any trace of pesticides at all, meaning that even minimal contamination from pesticides applied by neighboring vineyards can render an entire marijuana crop unsellable. 

At the same time, grape growers also face challenges if pesticide regulations become too restrictive due to the presence of cannabis farms. Issues with pesticide drift have been the topic of numerous legal disputes in Santa Barbara. As a result, some vineyard owners have been forced to alter their pest management strategies to avoid affecting nearby cannabis farms. Such changes have sometimes forced grape farmers to adopt more expensive and less effective alternatives. Without effective pest control, vineyards risk losing crops to disease and infestations, which could consequently jeopardize wine quality and yields.

The Issue of Odor In Wine Tasting

In Santa Barabara County, cannabis odors have created a critical point of contention brought up by cannabis cultivation opposition groups, county residents, and some local wineries. These overwhelming odors produced by large growing operations have become a particular source of backlash from the county’s vintners, who claim that the dank fumes are chasing tourists out of tasting rooms and negatively impacting grape crops in the area.

Among winemakers, the key concern is the presence of these aromas wafting through vineyards and tasting rooms. For one, it has been claimed that odors from cannabis farms potentially deter tourists from Santa Barbara’s wine region, and this could entail significant negative financial impacts on local tasting rooms and wineries, of which there are over 300 in the county.

Not only are the cannabis fumes unpleasant for guests, but there is also the concern that cannabis farms near tasting rooms will conflict with the visiting wine tasters’ ability to smell and taste wines. Wine tasting is a multi-sensory activity primarily involving taste and, perhaps even more importantly, smell. Smell is said to be intimately involved in what we taste, and for this reason, many wineries already forbid staff from using perfume or cologne and some even discourage the use of scented deodorants and creams. It is believed that the powerful aromas emitted by nearby cannabis farms will contaminate wine tasters’ experience and affect their perception of the wines painstakingly and meticulously crafted by local winemakers.

Then there are also vintner concerns about terpene drift. It has been argued that the presence of certain volatile aromatic compounds, such as eucalyptol terpenes, have significantly negative effects on the aroma and flavor of grape crops, contaminating the quality of resulting wine products. However, these claims are still debatable, as current scientific evidence is yet to support them. On the contrary, experimental results have indicated that the trace terpenes from cannabis or eucalyptus odors that would potentially contaminate grapes have not been found to produce significant changes in grape flavor profiles, nor do these compounds show any significant negative effects on tasters’ perception of wine flavors.

Vintner Prestige and Reputation 

Napa’s particular resistance to cannabis agriculture also underscores a broader fear that the presence of cannabis farms would potentially undermine the cultivated image of the Napa Valley wine country as a world-class winemaking region. Whether due to concerns about aesthetics, public perception, or marketing challenges, some winemakers regard their image as threatened by the presence of the cannabis industry.

In part, winemakers maintain that nearby cannabis farms can affect the quality of their meticulously curated grape crops, risking brand reputation for local wineries. Napa Valley produces some of the world’s most coveted grapes, and these quality harvests are regarded as the foundation of the award-winning wines Napa Valley built its brand. Either via resource scarcity, crop loss, or odor drift, nearby cannabis farms are believed to pose significant risks to the final quality of the region’s treasured grapes and wine products.

However, another sentiment prevails throughout these concerns about Napa’s brand image. A number of winemakers hold that, given the cultural stigma associated with cannabis use, allowing for cannabis cultivation among the region’s famed appellations would undermine Napa Valley’s reputation as a destination of cultural refinement and prestige. Such worries, unfortunately, reflect outdated and elitist attitudes about cannabis that still remain despite increasing legal and scientific acceptance of the plant for its medical, financial, and environmental significance across the country and the world. 

A Case for Coexistence Between Wine and Weed

Despite the setbacks and complicated negotiations, business owners in the cannabis industry are gradually entering California’s northern wine regions through a series of compromises, concessions, and pacts involving regulators and prominent figures in the wine industry.

Napa’s neighboring wine region, Sonoma County, offers a glimpse into how the weed and wine industries might eventually coexist through careful negotiation and regulatory compromise. Compared to Napa, Sonoma County has been more welcoming to cannabis commerce and is home to over 150 licensed cannabis businesses, two-thirds of which are cultivation-based. One of these businesses is Sonoma Hills Farm, a craft cannabis cultivation enterprise located in the Petaluma Gap wine appellation. After a lengthy three-year licensing process, the owners of Sonoma Hills Farm were able to secure the county’s first 1-acre marijuana cultivation permit in 2019, which required the operators’ agreement to over 200 land-use conditions that addressed common concerns from local vintners and residents. Today, Sonoma Hills Farm boasts premium cannabis grown using regenerative farming techniques alongside a culinary garden featuring a bountiful range of produce, an apiary, and a Foraging Forest. 

Despite Napa County’s resistance to cannabis farming, industry advocates like Stephanie Honig and Eric Sklar are concerned that Napa is losing tourism dollars to its more cannabis-friendly neighbors in Sonoma. Intending to integrate premium cannabis production into the Napa region’s wine-based economy, Honig and Sklar founded the Napa Valley Cannabis Association, a coalition of over 500 members who engage in collaborative efforts with city and county officials to develop a robust regulatory framework for cannabis cultivation permits in the famed wine region. The association has made numerous proposals to ensure a harmonious coexistence between weed and wine. Some proposed measures have involved limiting cannabis cultivation acreages on individual farms and restricting cultivation sites to ridgelines on Napa Valley’s eastern side, away from the premium vineyards on the valley floor. A major breakthrough was made in 2023 when Sklar was able to open Napa Valley Fumé, Napa County’s first licensed cannabis cultivation business.

Looking Forward: Can Weed and Wine Find Common Ground?

The coexistence of wine and weed in the Golden State will require careful regulation, collaboration, and a shared commitment to preserving the legacies of these two agricultural treasures. With the expansion of California’s legal cannabis industry, local officials and farmers across the state are faced with navigating new regulatory and economic complexities. However, recent successes in the renowned wine regions of Napa and Sonoma provide evidence that future collaboration between cannabis industry operations and prolific vintners is possible with the right regulatory frameworks. A variety of measures, such as zoning adjustments and odor mitigation standards, will be necessary going forward for both industries to thrive and coexist harmoniously.