That's the thing though. With just 100 acres, someone could supply pretty much the entire online market for kava drinking. With 1,000 acres, they would own the kava market. they would be impervious to these crazy price hikes that we're all dealing with now. Nobody else would sell any kava because this grower could afford to keep their prices significantly lower than everybody else. They would have 12 distinct kava varieties and would never run out of stock.
I too believe that there is little to no "wild" kava left in Hawaii (It's not really wild. It's owned by someone, even if it was forgotten). What I always wondered though is why that's the case if the Hawaiian Awa Council or whatever was microchipping. If it was microchipped, shouldn't it still be there? I assume they weren't microchipping kava that is "so far out and so hard to get to that people will not go through the effort because the effort is too great." Right?
I have no idea how many acres Chris has, if any. But I think you underestimate the size of the market by a large margin.
Well, I bought from him consistently early on and for a few years. During the time period I mentioned, he had a lot of potent root. The mahakea used to be one of my all time favorites but I really liked many others.. papa kea, hanakapi ai, hiwa, moi. Then suddenly the quality dropped in 2016. I thought it was a fluke, so I kept buying and hoping it'd get back to the way it was before. By the middle of last year, I stopped buying and tried to get information from him about the change in quality. After getting no information and hostility from chris and garry, I gave up. So yeah, I've bought regularly and for a while thought he was on the up and up.
I hear you. I appreciate your longer history with ghk. Like i said, my frame of reference is apparently shorter than yours. But I know a good kava and I've had several from Chris between the end of 2016 and now.
He's claimed "thousands". And I have a pretty good grasp on the online kava drinking market size. If you include supplement manufacturing and kava bars, it gets much larger. I'm confident that a 100-200 acre farm could supply the entire online US market for kava grown for drinking.
Chris mentioned in this thread that the only wild kava left is so hard to get to that nobody is even willing to steal it. Surely they wouldn't have chipped kava that nobody would have stolen in the first place. I agree that any chipping that was done (I question the extent of this practice due to past embelishments) was done in response to theft. I just wonder where all that chipped kava went.
Just curious; are there other plants growing in forests that get microchipped? I guess I know animals get radio collars sometimes. Just never occurred to me that people would track plants.
Good question. A chip like what's in my dog's neck is kind of pointless, right? If some ice head digs up a wild kava plant, it's not like they'd take it to the kava humane society and have it scanned. GPS equipped chips would be prohibitively expensive, I would assume. Just more questions...
Yes! Micro chipping plants is now common. I recall seeing it in the American West with certain cacti that take a long time to grow. They tagged and inventoried the cacti and were able to track it if stolen
IF all three sides were different, its just hard to see how it could get resolved while still allowing face to be saved, given the intensity of the discussion (which I am guilty of having contributed to). Well, I'm just gonna keep being open to buying from all the vendors whose kava I enjoy.
Wow; that's cool!
It was actually very cool and fascinating to me. I think it was new Mexico or Arizona area. There were thousands of these huge cacti tagged. Literally thousands. I have no idea how effective it was there but the scope of it was impressive
Plants are cool.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-20/microchipping-trees-to-prevent-theft/8634462
For a plant that takes that long to mature and is worth well over $100, it would be worth it if it's a big problem in your area.
I'll acknowledge the kumakua I bought last year was pretty good. The instant mahakea at the start of the year was very, very potent, the next batch wasn't. The micro mahakea I got around that time had almost no effects other than making me feel kinda tired and that was after taking more than 8Tbsp. Other than that, everything I got was as bland as most of the other lower grade stuff out there. For me I don't really want to take the risk of losing more money, especially if the vendor doesn't want my business anyway.
