ALMOST EVERYONE IN the Emerald Triangle remembers the free-spirited days of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s and ’70s. People from all over California and other parts of the U.S. flocked to Northern California to live a homestead life in the country. Folks moved here to raise livestock, grow their own food, live off the land, and often, grow high-quality outdoor weed.
However, the cannabis industry has changed drastically over the past 60-plus years. Cannabis products now resemble everything else that is mass-produced. Consumers expect similar results from heavily marketed varieties grown indoors under lights, dried artificially and processed by machines. The sun-drenched organic cannabis that once defined the market, whose effects varied depending on its genetics, is now either unsaleable or priced so low that hopeful growers can’t afford to pay a trimmer to hand-manicure it.
But with the help of the Legacy Cannabis Genetics (LCG) study, a project researching cannabis history and genetics led by scientists, advocacy groups and historians, beleaguered Mendocino County farmers can learn about how to protect their outdoor, high-quality weed as a regionally recognized product. The valuing of the product for its culture or its effects could help bring back a demand for high quality, organic outdoor cannabis.
Under the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) recently amended Cannabis Appellations Program (CAP), cultivators will be able to apply for an appellation of origin, which will give their weed the same legal protections that Italy has for its Parmesan cheese and Napa its wine.
Defining appellations of origin
“It is a way of holding ground in this landscape of modification and consolidation. It will help us weather the storm to better days with more normalization and market access for consumers and producers,” said Genine Coleman, one of the study’s researchers. Coleman, a Mendocino County resident, is a former cultivator and founder of Origins Council, a nonprofit cannabis organization that’s a partner of the LCG study.
Coleman, who worked in the cannabis industry for 20 years, was an advocate for an appellations policy called Senate Bill 67, which was signed into law in 2020. That bill amended a previous appellations policy that was established in 2017 as part of the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act. Due to bureaucratic delays and revisions made to the bill, the state never finalized the program or application process, so growers haven’t been able to apply, and many did not know it existed or that grower appellations were possible.
When the program is finally released to the public, estimated for next year, SB 67 will provide more detailed legal recognition for California cannabis, setting specific standards for the state’s legacy-growing regions, including, of course, the Emerald Triangle (Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties).
This bill addresses the gaps in the 2017 language by implementing specific rules and providing more guidelines for how cannabis appellations of origin would be defined. SB 67 made two very important changes: First, the bill restricts appellations of origin to cannabis grown directly in the ground without artificial light, emphasizing the importance of outdoor and organic weed. Second, it also allows growers to label their cannabis at the city or city-and-county level. This means that if cultivators label their product as Ukiah-based weed, it must be grown, trimmed and processed in the city of Ukiah. The same goes for cannabis labeled as a Mendocino County product — all production must take place within the county.
The appellations program also allows farmers to set standards for specific strains. If a region develops a unique strain, it can be protected through the appellation process, if the provided documentation can track its genetics. This allows growers to claim that only the cannabis strain from that region can carry the label, giving them a competitive edge.
“If a farming region has a specific strain that has been developed in that region, and they want to protect it through the appellation, they can put forward documentation that tracks its genetics.”
Genine Coleman, Origins Council founder and appellations policy advocate
According to Coleman, it is unlikely that a cultivator would apply for an appellation of origin for very popular and widely grown strains such as OG Kush or Sour Diesel. However, she did say that if a farmer is cultivating a unique, brand-new strain on his or her land, it would be a good opportunity for that person to apply for an appellation of origin and license the product.
“If a farming region has a specific strain that has been developed in that region, and they want to protect it through the appellation, they can put forward documentation that tracks its genetics,” Coleman said. “When they put it forward, they can make a claim that it’s only to be found in that appellation. Something like Blue Dream wouldn’t necessarily be a good strain for the appellation of origin because we want our appellation to be specific strains.”
The Cannabis Appellations Program is still not accepting applications. Coleman anticipates that the CDFA will be accepting appellation petitions near the end of 2025.
Online workshops
To inform the public about the importance of appellations of origin and other cannabis research, the team behind the study has organized a series of free online workshops to present the research behind the LCG study. The topics covered in the workshops will explore the history of California cannabis, the stories of legacy farmers and the importance of protecting intellectual property.
Coleman will speak at a workshop on intellectual property and public policy on Friday, Jan. 31. She will discuss how the LCG project can help cultivators identify their intellectual property and examine the policy implications of licensing cannabis products.
Coleman explained why Mendocino County is a focal point in the history of cannabis and how the region will contribute to the growth of the cannabis industry’s economic future.
“Incredible advocacy work has happened in Mendocino County, in terms of being one of the central places of the medical cannabis access movement, the back-to-the-land movement and the drug reform movement,” Coleman said. “Mendocino is critical because it’s the gateway to the Emerald Triangle and there’s great work happening here between the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance and Visit Mendocino. It is the county that’s best positioned to leverage tourism and tie deeply together the hospitality, wine and cannabis sector.”
If you’d like to “plant your roots” and be a part of the research project, you can share your own cannabis story and become a distinct part of oral history.
The “Oral Histories” webinar will be held on Friday, Dec. 20, and presented by Dr. Todd Holmes, an academic specialist with the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. The focus of this aspect of the project is to find traditional cannabis growers who can describe their connection to the plant. This workshop will explore the types of interviews being conducted and explain how folks can share their own stories for the study. “There’s a whole generation of elders that we are losing rapidly, so there’s prioritization and consideration around that,” Coleman said about the oral history project. “We are hoping to select folks that want to participate, and we are doing the most we can in service to the community.”
People who want to participate in the oral histories project can reach out to Dr. Holmes. You can also nominate yourself by attending the webinar on Dec. 20. The completed interviews will be stored at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.
All of the webinars will be held on Zoom at 9 a.m. and will end with a question-and-answer period. People who want to attend should register in advance.
Here is the upcoming webinar schedule:
- Friday, Dec. 20. Oral Histories. Dr. Holmes will talk about the 100 hours of oral history interviews to be conducted in the study and their use and role in the research.
- Friday, Jan. 17. Herbarium Science and Plant Genetics. Dr. Kuntz and partners at LeafWorks will discuss the role of cannabis genetics and herbarium science in the study.
- Friday, Jan. 31. Intellectual Property and Public Policy. Genine Coleman will talk about how the project will contribute to harnessing genetic resources and potential intellectual property and policy implications.
Past webinars, which explored topics such as political geography, community outreach and education, can be viewed at the Legacy Genetic archive.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.
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