But they can and will take over. And they will happily build monstrous greenhouse setups as soon as they get paid more for it. We have so much farmland here, we pay farmers across the country not to grow their crops. Simply to keep a workable market price. They can and will grow endless fields of quality flower using just the sun.
Absolutely. There seem to be a lot of folks around here who think that Cannabis is a mystery plant which cannot be grown like a commodity plant.
Genetics trumps everything. How many plants you grow from the same mother changes nothing about the outcome.
If there is no artificial light, maybe the buds are a little less dense, or maybe the terps aren't maxed. Who cares? The proportion of consumers who cares enough about these super high-end aspects that they would pay significantly more is tiny.
Cannabis is not some unique crop that somehow is difficult to grow or commoditized. As scale increases price goes down, they will happily plant cannabis for a higher return as soon as they can.
This.
IF the (legal) market for Cannabis becomes big enough that it will be worth it to run large green houses, the people with the money to invest in such facilities will do it, they will grow flowers that will be more than good enough for the general market at a price that nobody running a small-scale operation will beat. Period.
As long as taxes put a price floor on the weed, it could still be profitable to grow for the black market -- but that says nothing about the true value of Cannabis, it's a matter of tax evasion. You would be making your money from stealing taxes, not from growing something of "value".
The price of Cannabis will be that of basil, and since the genetics largely determine the quality, it will be good enough. The "connoiseurs" around here will disagree, but they are 1% of the market and the big producers couldn't care less.