For 170 years, the California State Fair has been highlighting the state's best agriculture. From cheese and wine to vegetables and livestock, competition over who produces top goods is fierce. Beginning in 2022, California made history by including something new in fair competition: cannabis. With this 2024 season, officials made history once more in creating a space where adults 21 and over could legally smoke, eat and drink cannabis products as part of fair exhibits. The expansion helped give fairgoers an understanding of why the Emerald Triangle is known as the cannabis capital of the world and brought an armful of medals home to Humboldt.
The California Cannabis Experience, a 17-day immersive and educational exhibit that's the first of its kind for any U.S. state fair, included product displays, educational insights, presentations and lectures. There were also a cannabis retail outlet and designated onsite consumption lounge.
"I started growing with my single mom when I was a kid, so I have a lot of experience with this plant," said Shanon Talifero of Humboldt's Skyline Farms, whose team took home five medals. "But still, I personally learned so much from the exhibit. I feel lucky, honored and humbled to have been a part of this experience and hope to be included next year."
Fair awards for cannabis included not just the indoor, sun-grown and mixed-light categories of the past two years, but also awards for cannabis beverages, cartridges, concentrates, wellness products, pre-rolls and edibles. With thousands of people perusing the well-appointed showcase every day and many partaking in the consumption booth, the California Cannabis Experience offered a chance for cannabis businesses to set up booths and talk to a crowd about the benefits of knowing where their cannabis products come from, how they were cultivated and by whom.
"I was selling my products on the floor at the exhibit and had many conversations with people who were genuinely interested," said Lorelie Sandemeno, owner of Sunrise Mountain Farms, which won a gold medal for its sun grown Burmese Mimosa strain. "I think that policy makers, customers, people who normally wouldn't use cannabis ... all different sorts of people were at the fair. It was not just a cannabis event so there was a wide variety of people and that really exposes people to the idea that maybe there is something to cannabis, you know, maybe it has all these benefits we keep talking about."
Producers submitted more than 500 products for the competition. Instead of being dominated by larger corporate entries, the fair included numerous small, local farms, many of which were able to enter using grants facilitated by the Humboldt County Growers Alliance and the Origins Council that covered their entry fees.
Emerald Triangle producers smoked the competition in many categories, with Humboldt farmers taking home 16 gold and silver awards in total. Humboldt winners included: Savage Farms, True Mom & Pop, Sunrise Mountain Farms, Huckleberry Hill Farms, MOCA Humboldt, Skyline Farms, Arcata Fire and Ridgeline Farms, Wildseed, Bear Humboldt, Space Gem, Ay Papi/Mattole Valley Sungrown, and Ay Papi/Huckleberry Hill Farms. An Arcata Fire/Ridgeline Farms collaboration nabbed the pinnacle Golden Bear in the cartridges category for their 100% Live Rosin Syrup Lantz All-in-One, while a Huckleberry Hill Farms/Ay Papi collaboration won the Golden Bear in concentrates for their Whitethorn Rose full melt. Space Gem took home the Golden Bear for edibles with its CBD 1:1 assorted flavor.
"Humboldt County has always been known for high-grade flower," said Mattole Valley Sungrown owner Dylan Mattole, who won silver in a hash collaboration with Ay Papi. "One thing that's exciting with competitions like the state fair is that outdoor product is showing up as the premiere source for making high quality concentrates. It's really what we do best up here — grow it in the sun, grow it in the ground. We have clean air, clean soil and so much love for what we do."
A number of participants noted the Humboldt farming culture is not just about one small farm but the community at large. "It's really awesome that Humboldt was recognized," said Wendy Baker of Space Gem. "This was truly history-making for me as a woman and edible maker, for Space Gem products, for all of us who work with this plant in Humboldt. ... It's really important that people see us, all of us, in Humboldt. We are so far upstate but we have something so magical here that nobody can really recreate elsewhere."
Johnny Casali of Huckleberry Hill Farms agreed. "It was wonderful to see how many medals the Emerald Triangle small farmers received overall," said Casali. "That recognition in making those folks who showed up at the fair aware of how unique and special we are, why our cannabis is different, that's really the biggest benefit I saw with the state fair. Time after time after time, the small farmers of the Emerald Triangle are showing up at the top of competitions. Eventually, people are going to realize that we are not just saying we are growing something amazing, but we have something that is amazing and different from the rest of the world. For the Emerald Triangle farmers, it's never going to be about one of us, it's always going to be about all of us."
Tamar Burris (she/her) is a freelance education writer and relationship coach. Her book for children of divorce A New Special Friend is available through her website tamarburris.com.