Home growers in the US produce eight times more than the legal market in Colorado, according to a new report

New to homegrowing or thinking about it? You’re not alone.

Cannabis data company New Frontier Data released its first ever report on home-grown cannabis in the US, and the numbers are intriguing, to say the least. The report appears to be the first large-scale data dive into the US cannabis home-grow landscape, sampling nearly 6,000 cannabis users and non-users as a sample.

According to the report, cannabis home growers are expected to grow 11 million pounds of flower this year – to put that in perspective, the state of Colorado grows just under 1.4 million pounds a year for its legal commercial market, meaning all home growers in the USA grow almost 8 times more than Colorado. This is expected to grow to £15m by 2030.

The report also estimates that cannabis home growers make up 6% of the cannabis community, or more than 3 million people. This extrapolation equates to about 1% of the total US population for home growers.

Related

Leafly’s new “Cannabis Harvest Report” ranks the harvest fifth nationwide

How much and how often do home growers produce?

Not surprisingly, the report found that one of the main barriers to home growing was legality, and states with adult-use cannabis had more home growers than states with no legal market or with only a medicinal market.

In addition to this argument, another statistic showed that of all the home growers surveyed, the majority (84%) had only been growing in the last two years, showing that many people only started growing after their state had recently legalized . Both of these findings suggest that as states legalize more, more people will start home growing.

To give a sense of how much and how often people grow, most home growers (73%) harvest 1-3 times a year, and of each of those harvests, 63% are under 2 pounds and 40% are under 1 pound.

To put that in perspective, a pound weighs about 454 grams, so the average smoker at a gram a day might smoke a little less than a pound a year and use the rest for concentrates or edibles or give away. This helps explain why such a small fraction of the cannabis community (6% according to the report) grows such a large amount of weed.

Some encouraging information for those looking to get into home growing: Most home growers (65%) spend less than five hours a week growing. What’s more, half spend less than $500 to set up their own grow, we also agree. Nearly 60% of growers said they spend less than $200 per harvest on seeds, supplies, supplies and more, showing just how inexpensive it is to grow your own.

Related

How much weed can you get from growing a plant?

Home grower behavior and demographics

Surprisingly, the report also found that 60% of people only grow indoors, while only 45% grow outdoors. Outdoors are cheaper and are often considered easier to grow, requiring fewer setup costs and tools. So, this information implies that most home growers either don’t have the space to grow outdoors, want more harvests per year, or have more control over the growing process.

The report estimates that homegrowers are currently spending a whopping $2.7 billion on homegrow equipment and projects that number to grow to $3.7 billion by 2030, indicating huge revenue potential in the growing equipment market .

Another interesting piece of information is that home growers are mostly people with families. Of those surveyed, more than half (51%) are married and around two-thirds (65%) have children, belying the notion of a lone farmer living off-grid in the middle of the forest.

Home growers are also spread across the income spectrum: almost half (45%) make less than $50,000 a year, while 25% make more than $100,000 a year, meaning people don’t always grow their own because it’s cheaper is.

According to the report, the top five reasons people grow their own crops are:

• “I enjoy it as a hobby”
• “It’s less expensive”
• “It’s more convenient”
• “I don’t have to worry about contamination/pesticides”
• “I can grow better quality cannabis that I could get elsewhere”

Related

How to set up an indoor cannabis homegrow for under $500

Data Disclaimer

While New Frontier’s data is amazing and gives great insight into the homegrowing market, it’s important to note that the data is based on a sample of 6,000 growers, and sometimes that sample is extrapolated to a data set of millions or hundreds of millions of people – as in the case of extrapolating the total number of home growers in the US, a population of about 330 million people.

One sticking point we found was the figure of 52 million cannabis users in the US – the latest data we found is from the CDC in 2019 which says 48.2 million, defined as people who “have consumed it at least once in 2019”; not the most accurate numbers.

As with all data in the cannabis industry, it can be difficult to get an exact number as the plant is still illegal at the federal level and is not properly tracked. We have to rely on forecasts and estimates and it can be difficult to truly represent a market.

Separately, the New Frontier report reveals astonishing insights into the home grow landscape, perhaps the largest investigation yet, providing consumers and industry professionals alike with valuable information about this little-understood market and its potential growth.

Pat Goggins

Pat Goggins is a senior content editor at Leafly, specializing in cannabis cultivation after working for a commercial grower in Oregon. When you’re not correcting typos, chances are you’ll find him on a boat or in the mountains.

Check out Pat Goggins’ articles

By submitting this form, you are subscribing to Leafly news and promotional emails and agreeing to Leafly’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from Leafly email communications at any time.