Forest for the Trees: a True Terpenes Podcast is back with the second half of our interview with Dustin Powers aka Future4200. He’s known for disseminating the best practices and newest science on cannabis extraction and permaculture. You can find his information on his Instagram account or the Future4200 forums www.future4200.com and Good Life Gang https://goodlifegang.tech/.
In the first episode we jumped around a bit talking about cannabis, terpenes, science and permaculture. Our second episode follows up on these themes with a focus on intellectual property vs open source information sharing, permacutlure’s ties to craft products and extraction technologies of the future.
Thanks for tuning in to Forest for the Trees and we hope you enjoy the conversation. Please subscribe to catch future episodes and follow us on Instagram. Special thanks to True Terpenes for bringing you this episode and all the recipes, science and more on the True Terpenes blog.
Read the transcript below:
Transcript
Ross Hunsinger: 00:25 Hey its Ross from True Terpenes. Happy New Year and thanks for joining us for the second half of our conversation with Dustin powers at MJBIZCON 2018 in this segment we discuss intellectual property versus open source information sharing. We take a deep dive into permaculture and the craft products and community development that spring from those projects and relationships and we picked Dustin’s brain on extraction from tried and true methodology to vanguard technology that he is once again in the forefront of propagating our thanks for everyone’s feedback on our first show. We appreciate you letting us know what you think and look forward to keeping you supplied with solid conversations with the brightest minds in cannabis. All right, here’s the second half of our interview with Dustin Powers at MJBIZCON 2018 Las Vegas.
David Heldreth: 01:09 A lot of people think of these things and plant medicine as not being not real but science is finally catching up to kind of prove some of these things, things that also shows some that aren’t beneficial so we can finally get some of these answers, like you said it also goes back to personal responsibility to find out what’s good for you instead of just taking your doctor’s recommendation too. I think people don’t ask enough to find out what’s good for themselves.
Dustin Powers: 01:28 Yeah. It goes back to that whole human hubris where we can’t really, there’s too many variables. You can’t say what is absolutely the right thing to do one way or the other one that’s freedom like how can the government know what’s best for everyone. We know some things will kill you, so don’t do that, and there will be big warning signs, but you should never be banned from doing anything that you want as long as you’re not hurting anybody else. That’s ridiculous. If I want to put anything in my body. I will put anything in my body. There isn’t anybody fucking telling me that I can’t.
Ross Hunsinger: 01:53 I really appreciate it. It actually just today as your post about the ever progressing they, that’s a good site. No, I mean there was immediately a, I forget what the guy’s comment was, but like,
David Heldreth: 02:09 oh, it was af vape.
Ross Hunsinger: 02:10 Yeah. And really like, okay man, like gas. But like I would if maybe one day I want to smoke, I don’t know, fruity mango bombs or whatever, blow clouds.
Dustin Powers: 02:23 I want to have freedom to choose always fucked. That’s the definition of being an American is freedom of choice and that’s essential to the pursuit of happiness, which is the definition of liberty. That’s what this country was founded on. So it will be coming and telling me what I can do. Let’s look at the track record anyways.
David Heldreth: 02:39 Science might Change. We might find out two years from now we’ll look. Marijuana has been illegal for how long? Ago and allof a sudden we find out it is great for all of these illnesses. So the track record of government making the right decision is not good.
Dustin Powers: 02:50 Yeah. And alcohol was and still is a poison yet making it illegal didn’t change anything. It made it worse. People die from crime and now it’s legal this time.
David Heldreth: 02:59 But also from tainted alcohol
Dustin Powers: 03:00 Sure on the all the in, yeah. If you really did have a problem regulate, which I think to actually be free market like especially in the age of the Internet that seem free market. People like to pull up historical examples of said well here in history know free market didn’t work because everybody got a professor saying did they have the Internet did they have blockchain could they talk to each other or do they all just get oppressed individually? Of course they did cause a dictator if your government will always an oppressed the individual,
Ross Hunsinger: 03:27 You, both of you gentlemen use the Internet to its fullest potential more than anybody I know though. So you are definitely like Malcolm Gladwell’s style outliers for sure on that like you guys and they get like, it’s funny now like looking at again like you both are just like open source warriors wealth of information like cornerstone community type thing. I think that’s like we’re getting a theme that we keep saying is a stewardship thing, right? Like it’s stewardship of culture and stewardship of the land stewardship of yourself and I get it is it’s self governance. Liberty.
Dustin Powers: 04:02 Yogi, you threw out a word earlier, it was like, um, some about going against the grain of society or something like that. Like these things are so productive are so popular because it’s so against the norm, right? Everybody’s Ip locked down like nothing. So I’m, well, you know, you we’re these like little little guys that are like, hey fuck your Ip. Like who cares about that? You know, you’re not going to hide it. I figured it out. We’re going to grab that.
David Heldreth: 04:28 You can get a patent. And I filed for myself and so I definitely see the value of doing that because I plan on it. Like some things I’ll work with large corporations that have you dealt with that I will just screw you. So there’s, there’s times for that. But at the same time I give away and tell them information. So it’s all that balance. Like there’s things you want to protect, but I still, I presented on it and gave that information away. And like if somebody wants to take that and do that, they’re going to do that. There’s nothing I could ever do to stop that. And I knew that by sharing that. And, but at the same time, if some large scale farmer, you know, let’s do it, I’ll let you know that will be tracked. And so then there’s like that get and take, you know, like I’m not going to go after some guy in his house who is growing his own weed.
Dustin Powers: 05:02 Sure. Yeah. That’s an interesting one that I brought some of the samples of the hmuulus oil that I got from your friend, that doctor down here, I’m sending it off to a third party to get it tested and compared to what they said is in there. But that’s an interesting case on the, you know, that guy spent a lot of time in the jumbles of India finding this strain of hops that had cbd and there were any cannabinoids in it and they spent a lot of time with genetic, you know, work to get it to the plant that it is now high CBD hops variety. And I believe he has a patent on the day. Yeah. I mean, I understand where he’s coming from. I would argue that there’s better ways to do it. But, um, I wouldn’t need that give you more successful in life if he had been the guy that gave it up for free. And you know, all of a sudden everybody’s got cbd everywhere because the government’s good luck making a new plant illegal that has CBD Right. That’s why the Moss is such a big thing. Cause it’s like if we find another plant that’s got at these cannabinoids and I fuck you government you’re not going to trick us twice. We got it.
David Heldreth: 06:01 Did you see, speaking of which, did you see the, I can’t remember if said that to you, but the thing about the navarentia squarosa though you know the guy in BC, you know, we did talk about it, right? Hey. Yeah. So I, it looks like they might actually be, um, uh, mimics or isomers but still its thcv thc cbd, CBdV CBG, were all found. So there’s isomers of like every possibly in this thing
Dustin Powers: 06:23 and he just stumbled upon that to him though. He had no ideas. This plant smells skunky. And then make it bunch a hash. They sent him, he made an extract of it just like, I showed him and he sent it out to the lab and seeing the results I like, what the hell is this? I Found this weed outside? Weed outside? he’s like, no like a weed it’s just growing out there. Smellss like skunk has like, what is this?
David Heldreth: 06:43 I’ve seen it all over. I know exactly what it is. It grows all the way down to southern California all the way to Canada. I’ve smelled it before. They look when you driving downt the coast and smell skunk man, that’s that.
Dustin Powers: 06:54 That makes a lot of sense. I don’t know where we’re going with that. Oh yeah. I would argue that that guy would have, you know, here’s a newsflash. Right. And then when would heard it from him or got him really, you know, in the popular culture.
Ross Hunsinger: 07:09 No. And then you won’t until there’s a press release to boost whatever, like public interest he’s trading.
Dustin Powers: 07:14 If he was the guy that gave out the hops you’d still be hearing about him. If all of a sudden this whole thing was revolutionized by, this guy’s hops, but he’s hiding behind his little, you know, Ip, you know, patented seeds. He’s going Monsanto, he’s going old school and that’s not the way of the future. Good luck with your Ip. You know, in the, in the open source world, look how that’s gotten the scientific journals, right, but fuck your Iq if this, this little Russian girl is going to hack your ap forever. Good luck.
Ross Hunsinger: 07:43 There’s 400 phones right now working on your password.
David Heldreth: 07:49 Except for his information is already out there. Yeah. That’s the beauty of it.
Dustin Powers: 07:54 Yeah. I mean you can go to the jungles of India and tire and toil to try to find that hops plant I’m sure It’s out there
Ross Hunsinger: 08:01 Oh Yea it’s between the. I believe that it’s actually between the Yunan province of China into India. It was like in those areas right there. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Well that’s why the original species name is, Humulus Yunanensis after the Yunan province in China. He called it Kriya, which is his, he said it was a recessive gene that carries a CBD and so that line is what he’s calling humulus kriya, but it’s really just a line of the humulus yunanaensis.
Dustin Powers: 08:26 It’s not a cross. It’s a recessive gene.
David Heldreth: 08:31 That humulus yunanensis. The fourth member of the cannabacae family he has never been really chemotyped.
Dustin Powers: 08:37 I see. So we don’t know if it’s a cross or maybe just actually had cannabinoid pathways inside of it,
Ross Hunsinger: 08:45 There’s still a lot of unknowns which was what I was talking to Russo about this and I was thinking as up until recently, he was with this guy you’re talking about was being super open with me and he told me that I could visit as farm and he said he had it growing here is the only other things and then now supposedly he doesn’t have to go in the country now supposedly like,.
Dustin Powers: 09:03 oh, interesting.
Ross Hunsinger: 09:05 Rolled the shutters up.
David Heldreth: 09:07 Yea I think some money got involved.
Dustin Powers: 09:08 Yeah. Someone paid them to shut up. Yeah,
Ross Hunsinger: 09:12 but that’s really what it is. Again, because like with without there being incentive, there really is no reason, no air quote incentive.
Dustin Powers: 09:20 Right? Right. And if all you value is, is money because you don’t have enough of the other equity forms like time, then yeah, you’re going to do some things like, so something that could have changed the world. You can’t knock a person like that. That’s, you know, you look at does the other side of it is um, like the extreme poor. Even in this country, the relative extreme poor, the bottom half day they hear me talking about permaculture culture and all this stuff. We’re like, that sounds great but I’m working two jobs and got like an extra kid. So you know, keeping in mind that not everybody has the same freedoms that is, is important to, you know, setting up situations that can help those people will, that’s
David Heldreth: 10:00 One of my longterm goals. And I think kind of similar to what you’re doing with your farm, cause you by having a land you’re doing that, you create opportunities that inevitably lead to needs for work or needs or things that can allow people to start moving there. And as people started doing things like that in other privileges, then they’ll be morning for work and they’re more concerned. People’s live in those areas and you start building
Dustin Powers: 10:18 the permaculture farms and everything I’m doing is never so I can make a bunch of abundance and ship it off and sell it somewhere. That’s not what it’s about. It’s to bring in social capital and to bring people in and feed them and say, look, here’s how we’re doing what I’m doing. Hopefully you can find out, you know, I’ve got all this land, come set up, shop here, like come, come get out here in this town. Start growing, had grown food, whatever. Working here on the farm or any other thing that makes sense. I’ve hearing these little like eco villages basically. Um, and, and spreading that throughout because yeah, it’s not about me making a bunch of money, shipping all this meat everywhere. It’s about bringing people in. Like I’m over that
Speaker 4: 10:53 I shipping just produces a free of the money that you make from something with the profitability that this, that again, once again, it’s just one of the factors. The everyone’s, so it’s a device in this globalization to shut things everywhere. And we had a lot of the shit here. Yeah. You want this one that’s over there.
Ross Hunsinger: 11:14 Like I’m being that we are all from the northwest and I think we can all speak to the commoditization of the northwest as a brand export, right. Or a cultural identity export. And so much of that is tied to things like our agriculture, the way we handle our food product and the respect that we supposed to put any. And it’s like, it really is a strange thing.
David Heldreth: 11:38 That is craft. I mean, whether it’s craft candidates, craft beer, craft wine, the wineries, the then or the, the, the growing of the meat and permaculture breeds craft, whether it, cause that’s a little higher quality meat, higher quality raw fiber or whatever you’re using for whatever good. And then, so then that has to exist for you to have the high end beer to, you have to have the sweater made of the hemp fabric is the best or whatever you’re making. So by having that, it builds these other industries.
Dustin Powers: 12:06 Yeah, the whole thing just goes around in big circles. Cause, what is the high end, but the rich people in the cities wanting to buy it.
Ross Hunsinger: 12:14 I mean we were talking about them not to knock this city of fabulous Las Vegas, but we were talking about for a city that has, you know, as much money and wealth and all opportunity to have things with soul and character or be well executed or done, it’s just not there because it’s not, this place is not this town. Well there might be a little bit like anybody listening to this please like give us the plug on the cool shit in Las Vegas outside of um, moon sun cactus nursery.
Dustin Powers: 12:48 You know, I went to Red Rocks with a friend when I was down here, a couple like at the beginning of this year. And that was super cool. Hiked up on the right.
Ross Hunsinger: 12:54 Oh, okay. So I’m from Barstow, which is like two hours away. So yeah, outside the desert here, there’s the one amazing places just gotta get out of the city. I think that’s kind of the answer in general. Well, for this conversation is people get out of the city.
Ross Hunsinger: 13:08 It’s the John mere quote, right?
Dustin Powers: 13:10 People, there’s a reason that people have flocked to a city and I don’t think that it’s overly manipulative. I think that the situation has allowed for manipulation to, you know, faster. But it’s not to say that we, okay, so what are we talking about? We want everybody to move out to our prom culture spot, right? Well, we’re going to have to start putting some infrastructure and if we got hundreds of people, all of a sudden we’re out of fucking city. It’s just he sees it needed to be planned around agricultural centers. And you look at like Mexico City, Mexico City was the giant Lake and it was a giant agricultural center where everyone’s growing food and hanging out and it always circles back to this, like all those other distractions and wastes of time, they don’t have it like the whole core, you know though, every time you come back around the circle, we ended up there like we should be just chilling and smoking and fucking and eating and talking like this.
David Heldreth: 13:56 But the problem is eventually one group really likes what that group’s doing until everyone starts moving there. And so like how do you create a situation where people make their place better.
Ross Hunsinger: 14:05 We were just talking about like just trade lines, trade routes and things like that to find the world’s, yeah,
Dustin Powers: 14:12 yeah. That’s inevitable. He will. Situation is I then earth is finite and we multiply. So no matter what, there’s always going to be strife and even, okay, so let’s say we get all a hundred percent peaceful and we go permaculture, there’s still a finite number. I somewhere on the end of that. Now that’s where being human and thinking,
David Heldreth: 14:30 although perhaps we’ll look at our own breeding as well.
Dustin Powers: 14:33 Uh, I mean, yeah. Yeah. So the earth is, the earth is nowhere near as abundant as it could be. Right? We could, we could implement permaculture globally and sustain, you know, massive more amounts of population than we have, but times a million. And I go up ever and ever and ever. Right. Because we are a part of that system. And if, if our role is to make that system better, if we can prove that we can do that through horticultural, then the more of us, the more better permaculture there isn’t. It just all expands on itself right?
David Heldreth: 15:05 I supposed it’ll be Mars after that.
Dustin Powers: 15:06 I don’t know what is.
Ross Hunsinger: 15:09 How is the town of South Bend? How’s that? How have they received you?
Dustin Powers: 15:13 Uh, so when we first got there, before cannabis was legal, we were the first people to come to town from outside that didn’t know anybody there have family. So overall it was awesome. We started spending money, like I spent a lot of money cash with the hardware store, with the local bars, with the grocery stores, like they’re stocked. Um, and now we’re just like a, a staple of the community, I guess it’s grown quite a bit. There’s a lot of new young people because of the cannabis scene. So that’s nice.
Ross Hunsinger: 15:41 That’s again, that’s fully agrarian like that. That is the way those relationships develop path of travel development of those things exactly.
Dustin Powers: 15:52 Yeah. Especially when we first moved out there, It was like, oh, those pot farmers up on the hill and was like, man, if I were going to grow weed, this is the last place I’d buy. Which was a super ironic because then everybody was growing weed there and I still laugh at that and ridiculous, the terrible place to grow weed. But um, so, but we are, the friendly pot farmers up on the hill even though that’s never what we did. And now you know, coming full circle. I grow a couple of plants up there now but we never did back in the day I was, I don’t want to get in trouble for anything here. This is, you know, and so they seen us grow up to are they seen us turn this overgrown 20 acres now, 40 acres into now Yogi it’s been awhile since you’ve been there, yeah, in the spring when we do our next year work you’re going to have to come check it out. So we’ve cut a terrace and a swale and we’ve cleared the land all the way across the new property that we bought and we’re going to cut the main key line in the same where the kitchen and building, taking those pictures on the key line and that’s going to connect all the way to the far property line. And then it’d be another one that connects back. This has been include multiple ponds, swales, the whole, the whole like terraces all through.
David Heldreth: 16:54 Well it’s just beautiful how you’ve done even the parts you have the layering of the trees. I mean as the trees mature, it’s just all, I mean you’re obviously engineering the system for the future.
Dustin Powers: 17:02 Yeah, for sure. And that’s, that’s kind of the goal is that these are generational systems where you know, I will never see the full benefit of this farm. It’s impossible and that no person, you know, if it’s properly designed, no person should ever see the full benefit of it because this thing’s going to be in a constant state of succession and productivity. But so really planning for these to be multigenerational stores of wealth and really that’s where it is store the Wilson sites of, of liberty cause you can, you know what better are then it’s a piece of land you can just live on to produce is everything. You need a large scale. So that’s really something we’ve been focused on and is one of the most difficult parts of it too, especially when you’re looking at tree farms and like this, unless you go straight Mark Sheppard, extreme stun method and you plant like 20,000 chestnut trees hoping for the one or 2% that’s kind of produced chestnuts in the next couple of years, you’re going to wait a while for these trees to mature. So it’s, it’s definitely been a like an investment waiting game. Throw more money at it through a little more earthworks, throw the plane, a couple more trees. So it’s slow going at first, but it’s, it’s really starting to ramp up now.
Ross Hunsinger: 18:11 Are you keyed into those Dragonfly Earth Medicine folks on some of their stuff?
Dustin Powers: 18:14 I talked to them a cursory, like they, you know, they’re, they’re definitely busy guys. So I, what I realized is that, um, I’m a lot more fanatic about my instagram dms then most people are, um, which I don’t mind them at all. It’s, but that goes back to that in all the Modafinil, right? Where my brain just works in a different way. But I don’t blame them. Yes. I love everything that they do. I wish I could, I had more time to link up with them and do more things together with them. They’re busy. We’re busy. So, but they’re great. Everyone should follow them and learn from them. For sure.
David Heldreth: 18:48 Yeah, definitely. They’re just a great at cannabis cultivation and you could just beyond cannabis, everything, great products as well.
Dustin Powers: 18:57 And you start talking about permaculture and its the focus on your business and if it’s all naturally occurs it just happens, right? It’s kind of the benefit.
Ross Hunsinger: 19:06 It’s like Immediate vertical integration. Yeah. Like immediate.
Dustin Powers: 19:08 Well life gets holistically approached and you’re looking at whole systems and the listing isn’t exactly that. That’s really, so when you say permaculture, a lot of people go move on it, but you can really get the computer science guys because once they start looking at it that they really understand it. Cause it’s a, it is laid out just like a computer science. There’s very strict rules and the way that these systems work or identifying patterns versus, you know, like in the wild vs in a textbook. But other than that it’s structured very similarly.
David Heldreth: 19:38 Definitely. Um, and then I right now we’ve been talking a lot about permaculture but obviously your backgrounds and extraction. Have you been in anything [inaudible] so I’m just curious with what you’re doing. Like you designed that new system?
Ross Hunsinger: 19:54 Yeah. Yeah. So we were working on the job with Deutsche last year and I mentioned bucket tech and the the centrafuge. So I’ve seen a Biz con this bunch of centrafuges all over cause that is the tech, that’s something photon and some farm and I all collaborating on early on because I had the problem of what are you doing in southern Oregon farm that’s got five years of back duff and trim and you know like hundreds of pounds and we’re not going to run this through the hydrocarbon. At that time we had a close look and it’s like all right, I’m not going to run it through the closed loop, what can we just do ethanol tincture with it? And that was kind of like the evolution of all things. You know, we were right on the front edge with the system, then you do that and you got a bunch of crude and what the hell are you gonna do with all that now? So that was distillate. Um, but uh, so it’s a long story short. Now you’ve seen like scaled up centrifuges all over the place because ethanol is still the move.
David Heldreth: 20:47 Uh Oh, it’s just so much cheaper and easier
Dustin Powers: 20:50 and the regulators like it alot more, you can do your terp extraction from your hemp flower and then still run that material for ethanol extraction. So that’s kind of, that’s where we’re at, kind of coming full circle back to this real simple terpene extraction from hemp, thc free. So I mean that’s like the highest value product on the market right now.
David Heldreth: 21:09 So the interesting thing is we were just talking about that. And I won’t obviously name them, but I’ve got a large processor that I know that’s doing stuff, they’re literally not, they have a huge extractor for terpenes, but for them, the time it takes for it to dry and either they’re doing ridiculous scale, they’re not extracting the terpenes
Dustin Powers: 21:28 cause they’re not having good results?
David Heldreth: 21:30 Yeah, they don’t Exactly.
Dustin Powers: 21:31 Steam?
David Heldreth: 21:33 We’d run it through ethanol material and then, and that the whole process. And so I’m just like for them, they just see it. Exactly. I’m just like try to explain to them and they just don’t get it. Yeah. And I’m like, that’s a really high value point.
Dustin Powers: 21:45 Flash drying is cheap. Like he gets into cops rise. That’s what, that’s what my harm down south dead. They just rented a bunch of big giant uh, hops dryers are agricultural dryers and big giant [inaudible]. Yeah, no, no. They just dry it all on racks vertically in this giant seven foot ceiling building. And now it’s like, can we get terps out? they won’t be A-grade terps, but there’s some terps you got out of that. So we’ll extract some steam terps and then running all the ethanol. Um, but so also I’m just doing advisory positions with a bunch of people and can’t, you know, extraction of cannabis was a means to an end for me was it was just we had this problem, can we solve it? And they just that, you know, then it was okay, there’s pesticides or everything. Can we solve that? And keep kept stumbling and stumbling. Similar, but it’s not really, my passion is an permacutlure culture and you know, not working and hanging out smoking weed, right? Like, so science is, I have a very passionate about science, but I’m not an educated. And then like, I’m not going to be the guy like coming up with crazy novel new things and in cannabis extraction technique, the ideas, but not that, you know, the hard line behind it that we’re, we’re now under the level of cannabis science where it’s, you know, you’ve got PhD, you know, Chemists coming at this with all sorts of novel approaches that I have done. No idea. They didn’t talking about it. So I like to smoke weed and uh, I have a part in multiple different cannabis ventures. Uh, but I kind of taking a step back, I think it’s pretty, other than just from your, your social media network and things like that. When you’re talking to people, you can kind of see that you’re mostly doing the by stuff. I just was curious if he had anything we’re working on. But no, mostly just been like gang, uh, leveraging the experts that I build personal relationships with, you know, so all of these companies should hurricanes be hearing ranch, last society, et Cetera, et cetera. All of these companies that have been working with that are the experts in what they’re very specifically doing and just being able to connect the community into that. Definitely. Um,
David Heldreth: 23:46 I guess as we’re getting this, what are you looking forward to at the show in Vegas? Is there anything that you actually do want to see? A three I think you’ve seen just in the first few hours were there?
Dustin Powers: 23:54 Honestly, I was just at the last is that he moved and then the Deutsche Booth. And I still have in the top of the Deutsche big giant tower thing and looked around there. I didn’t see anybody else doing anything on their level so that that and that did apply the my suggestions to their centurfuge and had a big set up for one of my the people that I work closely with had already bought the thing and they’re going to set it up North Carolina. I’m going to go out there and help them set it up. That was, that was what I was looking forward to is to see who, who really taking the steps to providing a larger solution. So I’m happy that Deutsche pick that up and uh, we’re working on getting them into the good life as well. No, that’ll be beautiful. I’m definitely when people get interested, and I’m sure once you do that, I mean the scale, like you mentioned a scandal is just going insane right now. How long does that, you know what I mean? This, that one’s set up for like 200 pounds an hour I believe. But with some real simple well upgrades, you can do 250 pounds an hour of biomass and that’s hands free. That’s like one guy operating in is he’s not, he’s not lifting up that 250 pounds.
David Heldreth: 24:53 Getting that kind of goes into something that me and you’ve talked about a lot before as well as just as this market scales. Everyone thinks that you can get into this into either the mirror marijuana just meeting thc and cause the cannabis plant it, I’m sorry, I just have to pair us up early. People who will hate me saying the word marijuana, but thc plan versus hemp, which is you know, non thc containing or this bullet 0.3. Anyway, but I’m just seeing how that the markets are crashing because that’s production scales, cost goes down. And just like any other agricultural complexity, you just, you’re not going to have these price points that farmers are used to getting.
Dustin Powers: 25:27 Right. And this is the a time unlike any other, because we have this new burgeoning, um, economy and we have access to conversation like this where we can highlight niche. So that was something that I had written down. I forgot completely about my notes, but I’m focusing on niche like waste streams. The good luck gang is a fucking niche. Like it’s not even, you know, some random thing and the heat there that makes, you know, that does really well for me. Um, but you know, focusing on building up community aspects, focusing on taking waste streams, which Brent out people are paying to get rid of their waste. So you can be the trashman and, and turn that around in some bullets so you can get paid on the input and the output. That’s a fucking tall, the business model right there.
David Heldreth: 26:11 That’s like the biodiesel industry with the waste vegetable oil. I mean an example of that industry, which then plugs right into. And I know that you’ve been looking at that a lot too.
Dustin Powers: 26:20 Yeah. So, yeah, definitely. I mean there’s a lot of them. The, you know, when they say hemp can save the world, maybe if it doesn’t kill it first with monocropping, but um, we can definitely, you know, save a couple of trees through paper production, hardboard production and we can make a biodegradable plastic. And since we’re racing head first into this hemp catastrophe of over for production, why don’t we start looking at some of the things we can do with these other products that are just thrown away right now.
David Heldreth: 26:48 Oh definitely. I think as you said, it was just the problem, the, the overproduction problem is also just people just don’t know. No one knows what the market is.
Ross Hunsinger: 26:56 Right. And CBD’s still so valuable that
David Heldreth: 26:59 artificially valuable.
Dustin Powers: 27:01 Exactly. It’s the perceived, so it’s only a, it’s only a couple of years till the supply forces people to look at niche because, and that’s where we’re at.
David Heldreth: 27:12 It’s happened in hops too though. And then the beer side, the hops values have just plummeted
Ross Hunsinger: 27:15 100% and you going to continue to do so. But I think cannabis and cannabis is the first wave of that. Right. Where we’ve seen it plummet and it’s going to continue to go down. And then again, same thing with all this monocropping and these massive bio mass operations that are going to come on the market
David Heldreth: 27:33 A new dust bowl,
Dustin Powers: 27:34 Cannabis is going to save the world or will ruin it again at this rate I don’t know.
Ross Hunsinger: 27:41 Well again it’s about that self regulation, right? Like there needs to be somebody out there trying to sherpa it along and know that there are people out there that are well intentioned, but that’s really all we can hope for is that there are people that are well intentioned in all things.
David Heldreth: 27:54 And was it Rebel Roots I think and there are some other people and some groups shooting that direction.
Dustin Powers: 28:01 Yeah, for sure. And I mean it’s also you know the consumers responsibility to support craft.
Ross Hunsinger: 28:07 We were talking again talking about the federal regulation earlier that like you know, labeling a package is really what the market will accept, which is crazy because the onus is on the consumer to demand more from the people that are providing things to them on the marketplace.
David Heldreth: 28:21 Buy something that has been tested. I mean how long did medical exist and there was no mandate for testing from the consumers even though there were medical consumers. It’s a bizarre paradigm that the recreational markets where, I mean question testing all you want, which I do, but but at least it’s like the beginning of that process and why? How did that not exist in the medical markets
Dustin Powers: 28:41 How does that not exist in anything else that we put into our bodies?
Ross Hunsinger: 28:44 Oh exactly.
Dustin Powers: 28:45 And I’m opposed to banning things. If you want to sell myclobutanil ridden distillate. That’s fine. It should just be labeled as such because I don’t want to smoke it, but if someone wants to, I’m sure there’s plenty of people are eating roundup so they don’t seem to have any cause of that. They want to smoke my, they’ll do that. I’ll let them have that choice. That’s…
Ross Hunsinger: 29:05 You may disagree, but Goddamn you defend their right to believe in it.
Dustin Powers: 29:08 Absolutely.
Ross Hunsinger: 29:09 That’s what liberty is.
Dustin Powers: 29:10 Everyone should have the right to be stupid. That’s like the cornerstone.
Ross Hunsinger: 29:14 As long as you’re not hurting anybody else with you on the way down. Yeah, I’m right there with you.
Dustin Powers: 29:19 That second hand smoke is probably no good. I don’t know you might get all the mycobutol in your lung, but by the time you blow back out it’ll be alright.
Ross Hunsinger: 29:28 Thank you for taking the time and
Dustin Powers: 29:30 No doubt. Thank you for having me
Ross Hunsinger: 29:32 future4200 on instagram. Future 4200.com
David Heldreth: 29:36 Blue Sky Gang…
Dustin Powers: 29:42 Sky Blue Gang
David Heldreth: 29:42 I may have smoke a little bit too much…
Ross Hunsinger : 29:44 Well thank you for taking the time, man.
Ross Hunsinger: 29:55 Our thanks to you once again for tuning in. The Forest for the Trees is a production of True Terpenes and the views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Our thanks to Adrian Walter and Phantoms for our intro and outro music. You can find their work on sound stripe, and you can find us here every other Friday with another conversation about the ever changing world of cannabis. From all of us here at True Terpenes and the forest for the trees. Be well and do great things.
