2025 California Cannabis Harvest Report: Introduction

Introduction to 2025 California Cannabis Harvest Report

Budist’s California Cannabis Harvest Report is back to highlight the 2025 harvest season and bigger than ever. This annual snapshot of licensed outdoor cannabis cultivation in California showcases the ongoing tenacity of California’s outdoor cannabis farmers no matter the obstacles in their way: overbearing regulations, unpredictable weather, a fast-changing market, uninformed middlepeople, and apathetic consumers just seeking medicine that fits their limited budget in the face of unprecedented economic challenges on both supply and demand side of the market.

If we look at the historical record of California cannabis, there actually is a source for harvest reports - just not the kind of harvest we want to celebrate. For decades, corrupt law enforcement were rewarded for eradication efforts - and those are the only third party harvest reports that we have for bygone years. Reports like those from the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) - some years of which are mysteriously missing [1] or the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program data [2]. In more recent years, California’s Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) annual Cannabis Harvest Report provides insights on total harvest weights by county or license type but doesn’t provide any farm level or cannabis cultivar level information.[3]

All this to say, the Budist Harvest Report picks up a bittersweet tradition that we wish to turn on its head. We strive to provide a Harvest Report that is more useful than grossly exaggerated police reports from years bygone or modern DCC harvest data which is neither granular enough nor accurate enough to inform and frankly known to be inaccurate if not downright misleading.

Budist’s Harvest Report will augment these traditional cold hard numbers with proper plant, farm, and farmer context straight from the horse’s mouth. Who are the farmers? What plants were grown? When were they harvested? Where is the farm? Why were certain agronomic decisions made? How were these plants grown? From seed or from clone?

It turns out that if you lend a willing ear (or page), farmers will gladly share their insights and lessons with their neighbors, the next generation, and especially with eager customers seeking to learn more about craft, sungrown cannabis and why it is actually the best bang for their buck. Whether efficient in their brevity, or verbose in their detail, these farmers’ words echo beyond the hills from which they are from.

It’s important to highlight that the limited research that has been done on modern cannabis hybrids being grown in California highlights that the entourage/ensemble/symphonic effect and amount of different terpenenoids and cannabinoids available in sungrown flower is quantifiably more diverse than in the same clonal cultivars grown indoors under lights, according to a 2024 Columbia University study featuring Humboldt county farms Huckleberry Hill Farms and Moon Made Farms[4]. Growing under the sun results in a more diverse secondary metabolite profile and a differentiated class of cannabis that is intrinsically different than indoor cannabis and should be appreciated as such.

This process of disseminating information from the most influential annual cannabis harvest in the whole world has been ongoing since the 1960s, just obscured by a Redwood Curtain and fogline that actually stretches far beyond just Northern California but is undoubtedly centered there for myriad socioeconomic and politicogeographic reasons. Information about the amounts, quality, and new names and flavors coming out of the yearly sungrown harvest in California used to move globally purely through word of mouth. Written word about the cannabis plant was considered evidence, and thus vetted cannabis information directly from the mouths of the people who planted the plants you were smoking was as rare as a December harvest and even often intentionally obfuscated.

The Budist Harvest Report seeks to lift that veil, and transport you the reader to each of these historic cannabis producing regions of California during the height of the cannabis harvest season. This year, we’re emphasizing everything that happens during harvest - per usual, but we’re also highlighting the events. To that end, the historical theme that we are exploring this year and highlighting with each county is the ongoing piece de resistance that is the harvest party or any community gathering highlighting newly harvested genetics - everything from summer gatherings during the growing season, harvests during the fall and celebrations and competitions in the winter all the way to spring seed swaps and scion exchanges. Even under the strictest of prohibition, neighbors gathered to help each other with their harvests and genetics selection, and these grand gatherings of harvest sharing allowed the newest genetics to make their name first at home then abroad. These events have historically occurred in every countercultural corner of this state and others, and we intend to highlight each featured county’s historical or modern renditions.

For 2025’s report, we have expanded to include 7 Northern California counties: Humboldt, Trinity, Mendocino, Sonoma, Lake, Nevada, and Santa Cruz. This year, we’re going through each farm north to south, figuratively following the harvest. We start in Trinity County, go to Humboldt County, then Mendocino County to highlight the world renowned Emerald Triangle one 2500 square foot or larger plot at a time. We then head south to regions that are just as well known to California connoisseurs, but may not yet have broken through in national and international recognition. We believe it’s time to change that, and are happy to highlight these other green (and purple) regions outside of the Emerald Triangle.

We’ll start at the two closest counties that separate the Emerald Triangle from urban centers to the south in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and Los Angeles: Lake County and Sonoma County. Then we’ll go to foothills in Nevada County and finally all the way down past the Bay towards the Central Coast in Santa Cruz County.

In 2025, the licensed outdoor harvest accounted for roughly ~47% of all reported harvested wet weight in California. All in all, the 7 counties featured in the 2025 Budist Harvest Report accounted for less than ~29% of that outdoor cannabis harvest in 2025. For contrast, in 2020, the outdoor harvest accounted for ~38% of all reported harvested wet weight in California. Back then, these 7 historic cultivation counties accounted for just over 50% of the state's total outdoor harvest. The total amount of harvested wet weight has nearly doubled between 2020 and 2025, while the relative percentage of outdoor licenses held by these counties has dropped. In 2020, 66% of outdoor cultivation licenses were in these 7 counties. In 2025, that number is now 54%. Outdoor’s share of California’s cannabis harvest has fallen, as has the relative market share of several historic cultivation regions. The year on year changes highlight the effects of local control as well as average price of acquirable and licensable real estate, and also the allowed size of grows in changing the landscape of outdoor cultivation in California since the passage of Prop 64.

In 2025, some farms left half their fields fallow, other farms gave up their licenses. Some California-wide trends we can report include the fact that 2025’s wetter Croptober, a term for the annual crop harvest in October, led to early harvests at some farms across all regions. Some farms dedicate the majority of their crop to fresh frozen harvest while a solid minority of farmers still earmark their harvest for cured flower.

The numbers do not lie, even though we know they're far from perfect. Counties with more and larger licenses have eaten away at these historical cultivation counties' share of the outdoor cannabis harvest. Despite this stark downward trend in harvest participation across these counties, the farms highlighted in this report have been the much welcome - to the authors at least - data against that trend.

This report combines personal observations from farm visits and product sampling sessions, survey data from multiple years of the Budist Harvest Report, and the latest cannabis research to shine light on a side of California specialty agriculture that has been cast in the shadows for decades. We combine survey data from farmers in each county with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data [5] for weather information such as temperatures and rainfall, DCC information for countywide outdoor cultivation statistics accessed via Higher Origins [6], along with author insights from smoking cannabis from farms in the region to provide the most comprehensive California Cannabis Harvest Report to date.

As always, we extend our most heartfelt gratitude to all of the farmers that participated in this year’s Budist Harvest Report. Seriously, thanks to all of the California farmers that have worked with us through these iterations. We promise an even better report next year, and invite everybody to provide your feedback after reading this year’s harvest report.