2023 Sonoma County Crop Report and Cannabis Addendum Released

By Lauren Mendelsohn

September 27, 2024

 

The Sonoma County Department of Agriculture/Weights & Measures has released the annual county crop report for the 2023 year, as well as an addendum containing the cannabis-related data. (We’ve previously discussed Sonoma County’s cannabis and other crop report data here and here.)

The 2023 report and addendum are both available on this page, along with historical county crop reports dating back for nearly a century. We have also uploaded both of them as PDFs below.

2024-0630 2023 Sonoma County Crop Report_ADA_Compressed

 

2024-0630 2023 Sonoma County Crop Report_Cannabis Addendum_ADA

 

As the latest crop report and addendum show, cannabis was the 5th most valuable agricultural product, crop or commodity produced in unincorporated Sonoma County in 2023 – after wine grapes, milk, miscellaneous livestock and poultry products, ornamental nursery plants, and cattle/calves – with a total countywide value of $25,735,400.00. This value, which includes cannabis cultivated outdoor (12.76 acres) and indoors (0.73 acres), correlates to a total production area of only 13.49 acres across the entire county, excluding its nine incorporated municipalities. Thus, the value-per-acre of Sonoma County cannabis  last year (according to the data in the addendum) was $1,907,739.07. 

When this is compared to other local crops, agricultural products and agricultural commodities, the data indicates that cannabis cultivation creates the most value per the amount of space used. For example, while the total value of Sonoma County wine grapes in 2023 was $716,818,600.00, that value was derived from a whopping 58,842 acres of wine grapes, which comes out to a per-acre value of only $12,182.09. Another popular local crop, apples, produced a value of $3,577,000.00 in 2023 across 2010 acres of orchards for a per-acre value of $1,779.60.

The crop report also shows that 4 acres of hemp were cultivated in Sonoma County in 2023 with a total value of $714,300.00, which translates to a per-acre value of $178,575.00.

Annual crop reports are important for business and policy purposes. While we commend the Sonoma County Department of Agriculture/Weights & Measures for providing this data as it relates to cannabis, and hope that more county Agriculture Departments across California follow this trend, we also have questions about how these numbers were obtained given that the value does seem very high compared to what we know about the current state of the cannabis industry.

The report seems to assume that all of a permitted cannabis farmer’s crop was sold, when in reality that is not always the case. The report also does not go into the taxes that are levied on cannabis growers at the local level, or the fact that cannabis growers face a higher effective income tax rate than other agricultural businesses due to Section 280E of the federal tax code. Neither does it mention the heightened compliance costs for cannabis cultivators compared to similar types of operators. We intend to reach out to Sonoma County for additional clarity on these figures, which could be used in an attempt to justify future tax and/or fee increases for cannabis operators under the incorrect assumption that such businesses are more lucrative than they actually are.

Stay tuned for more on this developing story.

 

This information is provided for public educational purposes and is not intended, nor should be construed as, legal advice. For specific questions regarding cannabis or hemp in Sonoma County or elsewhere in California, please contact the Law Offices of Omar Figueroa at info@omarfigueroa.om or 707-829-0215 to schedule a confidential legal consultation.