Bluegrass Cannabis W/ Kevin Jodrey & Lelehnia Dubois Humboldt Grace - Legacy Project Episode 33

[00:00:06.050] - Elijah Welcome to the Bluegrass Podcast. Today we're talking with breeder Kevin Jodry and community organizer and rights advocate Lalenia Dubois about the Humboldt Grace Legacy Project, an auction format that's attempting to help breeders get paid for their work, as well as a very special musical feature by Zach Bryson featuring his song Home, My Body is a Temple, all that and more. So let's get started.

[00:00:36.890] - Elijah Kevin, do you maybe want to explain to some of my listeners just a little who you are and what you do?

[00:00:43.150] - Kevin Jodrey Yeah, sure. Kevin Jodry my roots are really cultivator, primarily cultivation and propagation. And over the course of my career, I got into running dispensaries. Nurseries was part of the creation of Ganja originally, and then worked with Ganja as an instructor to help drive forth better conversation in cannabis so that people are more aware of how to use cannabis in a way that's beneficial for them. I work internationally on business development in a multitude of countries, all related around really, what I do, which is primarily cultivation and how to get people to benefit from the work. And it's been really a fantastic career.

[00:01:37.390] - Elijah My second question sorry, it didn't go through. I was asking about how you all came to be involved with the Humboldt Grace Legacy Project and how that got started. [00:01:49.490] - Lelehnia Dubois Well, Kevin and I have I like to say I'm a daughter of the Back to the Land movement, and I'm a second generation cultivator. And Kevin and I met gosh, I guess it was in 2014, because we both believed that the pathway to have a healthy community was through legalization. And so that's how he and I first connected, was wanting to see our community safe and empowered around this plant because it's so much a part of this community. And then in 2015, when legalization started moving forward, I have relationships with folks who have been around this plant for 80 years. We have families that have been growing this plant for over six generations. And one of the values of this culture in these communities is the fact that they've had the opportunity to create so much genetic diversity around this plant, which is why we have so many medicines and why it impacts so many different things, is because of all of that work that's been done for generations. Yet in the legal marketplace, it's a lot of more of stuff that developed from the indoor, and a lot of these older folks in their seventy s and eighty s don't trust the system.

[00:03:23.170] - Lelehnia Dubois And Kevin knows from all of his work, and I know just from my community relationship that we're missing some of the most incredible cultivars that can heal, that can do so much, but can also stabilize production. And we wanted to find a way to create a pathway that helped protected not just the cultivars, but the culture as well as authenticated it. And helped show not only our legacy communities in the ML Triangle, but the rest of the world ways to value this plant differently than just how many ounces or how many pounds are going out the door. And that's been my journey with Kevin around it. But I'd love to hear Kevin's.

[00:04:15.090] - Kevin Jodrey Yeah. Lele and I met back in the development of at first, it wasn't so much legalization. It was really about establishing a medical framework in California. So legalization came from that. But the work that I was doing was to stabilize medical rights in California because I saw what had happened in Washington State. So Washington State, they stole everyone's medical rights. So when they created the Washington State, legality medical wasn't separate from it and protected. So when they realized they weren't getting the tax revenue they wanted, they just wiped out the medical program completely. And so I had been approached by a group from San Francisco that said, hey, if you were able to help us, we think we would be able to drive this forward. And that was really like the work that I was involved in, was anchoring medical rights in California, which we did. And then we anchored him in Humboldt County so that you have this incredible ability in Humboldt to have a medical potential, so that if you need more than six plants or you can grow state legal, you have an ability under 215 to cultivate what's needed. And I wanted to see that happen because I know that at all times in life, you end up returning to where you came from.

[00:05:34.070] - Kevin Jodrey So if you leave your neighborhood, it's best if you don't burn it to the ground when you leave, because you're probably going to end up back there. And so to me, I just realized that if I was able to use my position that I was in to drive it forward, it would be beneficial on a bigger picture. So Lily and I met then, and around that same time, because involved in this project. Around that same time, I was judging the Emerald Cup, and me and Jean had a cherry limaid cut that took a second at the cup. And it was such an incredible plant that I said, Man, I said, I'd pay you 30 grand for a cut of it. But he didn't have it. He had already cut the mom. It was just a seed plant. But it made me realize that because I had the nursery and I was cultivating relationships with people to drive new material in, I realized that if we had an auction that would allow us to be able to take plants, put value on them, sell them into the market. What it would do is it would have this multipronged benefit where it would take people who are holding plants and allow them to monetize their holding.

[00:06:44.110] - Kevin Jodrey And it would also, to me, encourage new people to come in to breeding. So that what you had was you had younger, newer people and younger, not just age, but younger, meaning like, experience in the industry would come in and be able to drive new directions so that we were able to really explore the range of cannabis. And my attorney team at the time was like, woo, you're a little too fast on this. And so we go forward all these years and Leely reached out and said, hey, I'm working on this killer project. And I said, oh my gosh. I said, I worked on one similar, but I paused due to time, but I realized it was the right time. And I knew that Lily's desire was to do good for the community. And so I just was able to get involved as a helper and be able to just add input from someone who moves genes around the world. What's required? What do you need to do to authenticate? What do you need to validate? How do you promote, how do we position? And so it's been really a great experience because at the end of the day, Lily's desire is and it's been her desire since I've known her to do benefit for the people around her.

[00:08:04.090] - Kevin Jodrey And so it's been really kind of cool to be part of a project that it's not my project, I'm just a small part of it to help drive something that has such potential, not just for the community that's existing, but for the community that will be built over time that comes into cannabis. Because for me, cannabis has always been this thread that weaves society together. And I would love to see that thread continue to be stitched into humankind absolutely.

[00:08:33.240] - Elijah Especially with small farms and independent breeders and people like you said, at that most local level, that most foundational level. When did trying to find a solution to this problem for you all become Humboldt Legacy Grace Project? Like, when did the flip come to where it's like, this is the name and this is how we're trying to actually do it? Not just the concept, but I mean, activating it right. Because I believe next year you all are planning to do the auction.

[00:09:02.430] - Lelehnia Dubois Yes? Well, it's been through a few reiterations, but really COVID I have a spinal cord injury and I've done most of my community building, most of my work through this method of zoom and digital communication because of that spinal cord injury. And when COVID hit, it really allowed everyone to start trusting this space and seeing that we could really build through these kind of platforms. And I had just stepped away from a role that I had in the industry and I had time and it was COVID. And I kind of started learning that there's so much room in this industry that if you're not doing what you really believe in, then you're probably not going to succeed. And this has always been what I've believed in around the plant, is that we needed to look at these cultivars with wisdom to continue the medicines. So we came together gosh, I think it's been about two and a half years, and we meet every Friday on Zoom from eleven to 1230. And we have, I think it's about 127 people that not everyone shows up every time. It could be five people. Sometimes we've had 30 people show up, the doors always open.

[00:10:30.730] - Lelehnia Dubois And we have been collaboratively as a group discovering building and innovating pathways that do protect, authenticate and validate that's. [00:10:48.670] - Elijah And where in it did like, I know you all have a white paper where people can go to and they can see what actually are all of the points you're looking for. What made you all think that the auction format was the right way to do this, as opposed to just other forms of getting these genetics and protecting these genetics. Why an auction?

[00:11:12.710] - Lelehnia Dubois Well, Kevin, maybe you want to answer that and I'll answer after you, my little because you've been involved in auctions with the plant much more than I have.

[00:11:21.690] - Kevin Jodrey Yeah, the auction idea was what it does. It allows you to really put an object up and to start to get bidding. And what I wanted to see was I wanted to see just it was the same thing with when I got into coming up with my own auction model years ago. It was based off the fact that as a nursery provider, I wanted to be able to have new material. And what I knew was that when we did work with people, we made it beneficial for them to work with me. So it allowed me to constantly access material. And at the time, many of the people I worked with were also seed dealers, seed makers. So we were the largest seed dealer in California. No one sold more seed stock than I did out of my storefront. So we were able to utilize this relationship of looking at your genes. You could either provide me a clone or I would go through your population myself and I would select out what I thought had most marketable values. And then we would push that into the system and I would give you all the publicity and credit so that it steered people back to your seed source.

[00:12:36.040] - Kevin Jodrey And then we would sell the Seed. But seeds were sold by other people too. So it didn't matter what it was, was it was trying to create a sustainable system so that you were able to have constant variety coming in. And I don't think anybody's smart enough to cover the full spectrum. Right. So I know I'm not. And I assume most aren't. So what that means is that you need a community of people to come together. And the only way that you can really encourage the work required to breed the commitment, the multi year commitment, is incentive, and the ability to put it into an auction starts to allow you to be able to see what the public really wants to buy and what is the top price. Because often for us in cannabis, we undersell our value because we don't understand it. And so when you start to put it on a public platform and let others create the value, you'll find that often, most of the time, you're worth more than you would have sold it for yourself. And so to me, the auction was this natural progression of how do we get things to drive forward?

[00:13:47.510] - Kevin Jodrey And if the driving forward is successful, then it would then allow us to get new people to come in. To me, it's about this never ending supply of new genes and different directions and purposes, because the picture is so massive and complex. It's the solar system. You only can see so much. You can only do so much. And that was the entire idea behind it, was that if you put it on a platform and let many people look at it, you would be surprised at who needed that exact item and how valuable it was to them. But if you're just trying to do it between yourself and a vendor, between yourself and a contract, you don't really know the value, because the person who's buying it from you isn't going to state it. But if I tell 20 people I want to sell it, then now they can now compete amongst themselves for it, and it starts to drive the awareness of the value of genetics. And so this whole valuation system of how do we make people aware that this plant that you're going to base an operation off of? And so I can use foundation plants like we'll use gelato, because gelato, for the last ten years, nine and a half years, has been the dominant plant in the system.

[00:15:06.530] - Kevin Jodrey How many billions? Tens of billions, 20 billion maybe, in value, created from a single plant, a plant that was made by a guy who lived next door to Burner. So burner's neighbor does a breeding project with burner, gets a plant, does his work. Lo and behold, it's $20 billion, probably in total sales in its lifetime. Change the cannabis world. Every single product today, 85% of them probably have that genetic in it. So did he get paid for all that work? Did he really benefit from it in a way that he should have? And so now that we realize that a single plant can be worth $20 billion downstream in all the splitting, like a stock, it starts to let you be aware that, wait a minute, if everyone believes this is a plant that has hypervalue, shouldn't you be compensated for it? And I think that the auction model is the only way to do this, because it takes it out of your hands and it lets the buyers fight it out. And I don't think cannabis people are necessarily as understanding of the value of it, because for most, they live in a microcosm, a miniature world of I'm a farmer, I farm, I produce a thing, it leaves.

[00:16:26.100] - Kevin Jodrey But when you're looking at it from a global perspective, a small farmer in Indiana can absolutely impact the earth. And that's what really, we wanted to be able to highlight and take some of the problems out of the hands of the farmer. So the farmer, the breeder, they do what they're good at, which is create and produce. And then you put it into a system where there's a way to quantify payment. So how do you get paid? How are you protected? What's your contracts? And you don't have to personally create the auction yourself. So it was a beautiful idea and Lily and I had the same idea. It's just that Lily has I would say she woven into the community in a way of community wholesomeness. And I respect that. And so for me, when she said, hey, I want to do this, I said, hey, I'll support it because really I support you. And I know that your intent is good and I know that you're going to do the best you can because she tries that with all the things she does. So it makes it kind of easy, you know what I mean?

[00:17:36.510] - Kevin Jodrey In order for the community to work, you all have to play a role. And in this particular case, I'm just a helper, which is great because most of the stuff that I'm doing, I'm not a helper, I'm the one running it. But in this one, I'm just there to help and assist someone that I respect who wants to see people do well. And for me, I look at it from the business end of it, of what happens when you do well. It drives innovation forward and it allows us, the creators, to not get lost in time, you get dragged forward and it creates a validity for all small farmers, and not just in Humboldt and Emerald, but across the world. Because really, all small farmers to me, in the exact same plight, we're underrepresented, we're overworked underpaid. And the network amongst us globally is what creates the work that all the larger companies use. Very few things created and used are created by those bigger companies. They gather things from people. They underpay, they under deliver and then they profit like crazy. And Leely's goal was to turn that upside down to a lot of people that really do the work and should benefit to benefit.

[00:18:50.260] - Kevin Jodrey And so it's really nice to work with somebody whose desire is that, because the inclusiveness and Humboldt Grace is a really fitting name because it's graceful and it's elegant and it's gentle and it's a really kind way to look at business from a true community perspective, which was from her back to land roots.

[00:19:13.310] - Lelehnia Dubois Thank you for all that, Kevin. I want to add one more thing to why an auction? I didn't understand this when we first started on this journey. But if you Google auctions, you will see that auctions have won two Noble Peace prizes because of the way, like Kevin just said, they can switch the game around and they create equity. It's a true way to create equity for the creators, for the owners, because of the competitive pricing it can create, but also it does something else. What I love is education. Kevin and I are talking about a marketplace that is still really new. A lot of people don't understand the value of their cultivars or whether we have a cultivar in the group. A breeder has one that actually is resistant to Hops latent virus. We also have another phenotype, two phenotypes of a skunk, one that have a really rare allele combination that makes them very unique. This changes the value of both of these plants, how they would be used, how they would be marketed. And we saw within our community, kevin's been doing this for years. Other people in the group have been doing this for years, building licensing contracts so they get royalties, selling their product at an elevated price because they have done the research and they have the science to back it up.

[00:20:44.620] - Lelehnia Dubois And we saw this as a pathway to, instead of empowering our communities to go big or go home, to stay small and innovative and lead the market through their innovations around the genetics. But no one understands what we're talking about because everybody likes to smoke weed and the politics are all around the economics. So we needed a vehicle to educate what an allele is and how an allele changes things and why these things are beautiful and important of value. And if you look at the history of auctions, not only have they won a few Noble Peace prizes, but Christie's Auction House. Sotherby's all those places that we know that sell the most expensive, exclusive, unique art in the world were developed to teach those communities, to teach the average man the value of a brushstroke, the value of unique pigments. Why, when it's made with this, it should be worth $100,000, and when it's made with this, it's worth ten. And we see the plant like those works of art, and we see the breeders like those artists, and the world needs to be educated on how to value these. And an auction is a really fun, exciting way to educate on why is this allele combination in the skunk exciting?

[00:22:16.410] - Lelehnia Dubois How does this terpene profile come out? How can we recreate that terpene profile? Because we love that plant so much, and so we see so much education, opportunity as well around it, as well as being able to, as Kevin mentioned before, create more competitive pricing based on the actual value of the plant, not just how much it weighs.

[00:25:45.030] - Elijah So walk me through say how you envision this going through say I am a California breeder and I want to get into the auction. What is the process look like in the nuts and bolts of this is how you get listed, this is how the auction goes through, this is how the tail end comes out.

[00:26:06.410] - Lelehnia Dubois Great question. Well, to start, this is our beta. So this year or next year is when we're doing it. It's going to be fairly small because we like to build right and tight first. But if anybody does want to participate in the auction, what they do is they reach out directly. They can reach out to me or Kevin or they can go to Leilay@humboldtgrace.org and ask, but really it's what do you have something that's unique and exotic that could add value not just to you, but to the auction and the other breeders within the auction. Right now we have one cultivar involved in the auction and it's been donated to the project. It's our beta. It's from the legacy of the skunk one legacy and we have two phenotypes. And those one phenotype, they both have some unique alleles. One is like you find in about 13% of cannabis, another in about 3%. And then two of them, those two are together in one of those phenotypes. So that's going to be something that adds value to anyone who participates in the auction. So this year, if you want to participate, it's reach out. We do have a cut going out through the grow off, so any of those farmers that participate in the grow off are going to get first access to the skunk one.

[00:27:41.360] - Lelehnia Dubois Number three, which has one of those rare alleles in it, the skunk one number one has the two together, which makes it a little more rare. So anyone can enter the grow off our tentative drop date. I won't have a final date until Friday, but we're trying to shoot for June 3 first for a pickup, and that'll be at Satori Wellness in McKinleyville, California, so people can participate that way. Then the other way to participate, which we're rolling out in September, will be to participate as a bidder. And bidders will get incredible access to these cultivars. We're working on hosting an event more within the middle, to the southern aspects of the state so buyers bidders can come together and look at these cultivars. And then there's the auction itself. People can come. It's going to be really fun. We're going to have a farmers market, so there'll be lots of cultivars to try and there'll be music. You'll really get to really experience our culture, and you can participate through attending. Now, if you just want to learn, anyone can join us every Friday on our Zoom calls. Again, reach out to Leilay@humboldtgrace.org and I'll loop you in.

[00:29:09.660] - Lelehnia Dubois And you can show up anytime. We don't care if you're late. Just be polite when you come in. We have guest speakers this week. We have a gentleman who's gone from MSO running an MSO nursery, who's now wanting to share what he's learned with the legacy operators. So he's going to come in and teach us some interesting things that he learned from that perspective. So those are really the ways that folks can get directly involved in the auction.

[00:29:41.630] - Elijah So this might be kind of two questions. In one, I believe that the auction is going to be metric compliant. So does that mean the genetics have to already be in metric? And also, how do you all validate the genetics? How do you make sure that, one, the people who are coming in do actually own these genetics or are actually the breeders and making sure that they are distinguishable somehow?

[00:30:09.450] - Kevin Jodrey Do you want to grab it? No.

[00:30:11.280] - Lelehnia Dubois Kev I think you should do the validation aspect of that question.

[00:30:15.210] - Kevin Jodrey Yeah. So right now it has to be through metric because California has issues with everything. With any cannabis issue in a state, it's problematic. So at this current time, it would have to be in your metric inventory. But what we sat down with, we thought about it. What we need is you need a genotype report so that you're able to prove identity of the plant through downstream. So there has to be a genealogical tracking. Then there has to be production information with a COA to substantiate. So then what it does now is it allows us to be able to say, this is what this plant does under these methodologies. So now you're able to create a replication of it. And then we got into, how do you know that it's really yours? So there has to be a public comment period. And what that does is it allows you to be able to say, this is what we want to do. And it allows there to be a challenge period where people can challenge that plan. Did you come up with it? And so what it does is it starts to create at least the premise of legitimacy, because how do you know what's what?

[00:31:34.290] - Kevin Jodrey And so the genotyping and the proof lets you say, this was mine. I marked it first. But just because you didn't mark it first doesn't mean it didn't come from you. And so the challenge period allows you to say, this is the plant we want to release in an auction, and here is a public comment period to find out, is there controversy around it? And that's really the only way you can do it, because, unfortunately, there's never been any proving of anything with plants. It was always like, who sourced the cut? So my name is connected to a bunch of plants that I said, this is the cut that we use to do this project. So they put your name next to it, and that kind of validates it, because then they say that's an identifier. But that doesn't mean that I'm the original owner of it just means that I'm the one who found it and then promoted it. And so the idea of being able to create a challenge period was critical so that it allowed people to be able to say, wait a second. How do we get to this point? And what that does then is it starts to create.

[00:32:39.950] - Kevin Jodrey I want to say, like, the good feelings with the plant, so that the people who buy the plant aren't knowingly buying stuff that was stolen, and it allows them to be able to buy something and have unequivocal ownership of it, that when they buy that plant, it's theirs. There's no challenge on that plant, and the contracts can be set up. So if I wanted to be only three people in the world to have the plant, you're one of the three. You could be the sole individual. I could put restrictions on what the plant is used for. I could put direction on how I wanted it approached. All of those things can go into contractual law so that the people who buy the plant are under some guidelines. And then on the flip, then there's also no guidelines. You buy the plant, you do what you damn well choose with it. So that way, what it does is it creates the ability for the individual entering the plant into the system to be able to have some sense of control. And it allows there to be a far better validity in the system in terms of honesty.

[00:33:49.190] - Kevin Jodrey So that what you're not having someone do is run around and gather up all the plants they get their hands on, stamp them all today, put them into the system. And what they said is, I stamped it first. Yes, I got it from.

[00:34:01.010] - Lelehnia Dubois You.

[00:34:01.510] - Kevin Jodrey But I stamped it first because that would be ownership. But if you put it out into a public forum and say, where did this come from? Who's actually part of it, then what you're able to do now is be fair. And I think that that's the main point that Leely was trying to create, was one of, like, honesty, where you got to make money, but if you screw in people to do it, then that's not good policy. It's not the way that you have any sustainability.

[00:34:37.150] - Lelehnia Dubois Yeah. One of the reasons that the skunk one was such a great beta cultivar for us is because it is so known and so talked about. And we're not here to say we created the skunk one and the breeder who curated it and held those seeds for this long isn't here to say that. What we're here is to use the skunk one because so many people know about it, to show a way to validate it, I guess, or authenticate it. And what we've seen, when you do these extensive DNA testing and you start really looking at the process of the grower, how this plant was curated, the phenotypical expressions are diverse. And what we're saying is that this is how this is this cut, this cut is like this. And we're not telling you one way or another. We're using science to let the plant show you what she is. Those extensive DNA tests so far have been a big piece of that. But also when you start putting those COAS together and then you start putting the breeder stories together, we also learn that then you start more value comes from those cultivars, because like Kevin mentioned earlier, it's about trust.

[00:36:05.020] - Lelehnia Dubois And the consumers want to trust, the product developers want to trust. And when you have clear scientific information to support that, hey, man, my skunk one does this, and it's better than your skunk one, you don't need to say that. You just say, here's what it is. And the truth is, we don't know what's better. We are so early on the research around this plant that I think a lot of those ones that maybe aren't so marketable, that look a little weird, are actually really important to medicine. So what we're trying to do is educate on how to look at this plant so we can really see its values instead of just depending on the story behind it. The story matters. The story is so important and beautiful, but when you have the science to support that story, it's no longer a story. It's something that you can actually build value on.

[00:37:05.710] - Elijah And because we were using skunk as the example here, would you all like to talk about the history that you all have looked at with this a little bit or still under wraps into the closer to the auction?

[00:37:17.890] - Lelehnia Dubois Well, we're in the heart of the Emerald Triangle, so the history around the word skunk is incredibly complex. But this particular one, as far as we can tell, is part of David Watson's lineage. We don't have David Watson's to cross compare in DNA, but when you look at the canopy scale, you can see that we show some traits that help support that. But what we do know is that our breeder, Marty, was given those seeds from Todd McCormick at the Emerald Cup many years ago. And Todd McCormick does validate we have the texts and emails of him validating that those were from Sam the Skunk man, that's the history. I won't go into the More histories like I'm working on right now, bringing three elders together, and one of them had a direct relationship with the smuggler that this community would call skunk because of the way it smells. But it really might more be one of the first indica strains that was brought into the US. Those old timers call that skunk. It is not David Watson. Skunk one. It is not the skunk that we're talking about, as far as we can say, because we can't say for sure is fairly close to that lineage.

[00:38:58.850] - Elijah And I know you all talked about moving into Southern California and other locations a little bit, and I know you're working on this first one still, but do you have any ideas about setting up auctions elsewhere or trying to expand the auction into a larger format? Like, do you all see this being an annual event, a constant sort of platform? How does this go forward?

[00:39:24.090] - Lelehnia Dubois Well, so the auctions in Central or Southern California are not auctions. They're what we're calling bidders tastings. And it's really for the bidders to come in, really get to know the breeders, really get to see the cultivars, hear the stories and taste some of it. But where is this going next? Absolutely, we want this to be a yearly event. Like Kevin mentioned, innovation is a big part of what drives all of us, and we want to see these communities and other legacy communities leading in that conversation because they have so much history around the plant. So we see new cultivars, amazing new cultivars coming out every year. And this is the place kind of like Fashion Week or nouveau bourgeois in France, where you go to get the first new wine roots. We see this as an opportunity for that. Where it's going to go if it goes national, international? I don't care to speculate on that. I think we want to do wherever it is the right place for it. And I would never want to limit this group if moving this or traveling with this auction would not be a good idea. But right now we're really focused on getting next year's event right and tight, and then we'll see where we go next.

[00:40:57.910] - Elijah And you talked about your example one. I'm sure you all must have other things that you're looking at or lined up. Are there any other areas that you want to talk about or projects that you're working on to bring into the auction?

[00:41:12.010] - Lelehnia Dubois I'd like to add that our goal around this auction, everybody's all well, where if that's going to go for a whole bunch of money, where does it go? Is what we want to do is purchase cryobanks and then lease them out to nursery. We have a nursery partner through Hendrix, through other nurseries, so the community can start really banking their cultivars, feeling safe about it around the project itself. I think in the auction, we're not just going to be auctioning off the cultivars. There's a lot of work to validate these cultivars, but we will be auctioning off experiences. So there's farm tours. We have an amazing culture here in the Emerald Triangle. We have wineries, we have breweries, we have amazing artists. And so we will be bringing in not just the cultivars to this auction, but we will be bringing in the culture as well to help show the community as a whole.

[00:42:24.790] - Elijah So with the auction format, it's really good for the original breeder, gets them the most amount of value. Monetarily, what would you say to someone who might be concerned about the price raising and this might be a good point for you all to talk about maybe canopy ride a little bit, but you have the first small farmer who's the breeder. How does another small farmer figure out a way to get these genetics or use that medical viability on a different small farm, even though they might not have the most money to be able to buy that spot?

[00:43:01.870] - Kevin Jodrey That would have to you can take it.

[00:43:05.030] - Lelehnia Dubois No. Go ahead, Kevin. I want to hear what you have to say when it comes to that.

[00:43:06.880] - Kevin Jodrey That comes down to the relationship between small farmers. So small farmers, you could approach the farmer and say, hey, I don't have the ability to work at that budget level. Is there a way that I can work collaboratively with you in any fashion so that we're able to make joint benefit? And I think that that's one of the things that legalization has done some real damage to the gene population, because legalization to me was important because it allowed people who were afraid of breaking the law to access cannabis. Prior to my 15 years of owner dispensaries, that shit didn't I didn't catch it. I was not ill. I was criminal cannabis. And so to me, I didn't understand how incredibly valuable cannabis was to people who had medical ailments, where it was the product they needed. It had this true validity. Once I got into medical cannabis, I learned that, and that's really why I went after the medical rights and the ability for people to gather cannabis freely, or at least without stigma, because I saw so many people die that they potentially might not have if they had gotten into endocannabinoid system stimulation and therapy earlier.

[00:44:36.530] - Kevin Jodrey So legalization to me was necessary to get the mainstream to benefit, because so many of them were caught up in what's right and what's wrong, and this is illegal and not illegal, and it was just killing them. And so for me, the population I saw getting beat up the most was not the cultivators. It was people who were legal getting killed because they couldn't touch cannabis without fear of some reprisal. But for us, in cannabis, legalization started to really change the ability to hold varieties. And so, like the raids from law enforcement, I always tell people the library I held in 2000 smashed any library I've had since. And when the sheriff's department jacked me on that spot and then they stole those genes. They stole things that I've never been able to replace, never found it again, never touched it again, never saw it again. And so some of this work here is to start to drive this awareness that the genes are priceless and that you just can't go crack another seed and get that outlier plant, just like I can't kill off my son and then go have another one and replace them.

[00:45:49.210] - Kevin Jodrey It doesn't work like that. And so the Cryo banking was imperative because you can hold plants in vitro, but it requires these charges. You have to keep cleaning up the media and boosting it. So it's this never ending cost. But cryogenic is affordable. And what it starts to do is it starts to allow people to hold germ plasm in a protected manner. And that protected manner allows us to be able to start to recognize that these plants that humans have found connection to and benefit from are priceless. And it starts to create this value for the plant in a way different than a commodity. It becomes something that's inherently more valuable. And that recognition is what starts to change the perception again. Just like we use CBD as an example, when Courtney came up with the AC DC cut out of my shop, I drove that shit into the system at a rate that no one ever had. I mean, we released an ungodly amount of free CBD everywhere and people couldn't understand what I was trying to do. And it was because I was trying to create a legitimacy for cannabinoid benefit. So that if you chose to use these non psychoactive plants for your needs, at some point you would recognize that psychoactive needs are valid as well.

[00:47:17.570] - Kevin Jodrey So depression and pain are both equivalently powerful influences on the quality of your life. And I think that all that CBD work really changed the world we're in because it allowed people to start to benefit from a plant that was forbidden. They started to become far more tolerant of people using cannabis. And so for us with what we're doing here is I think it has the same impact. It's to state that these plants that we're holding are profoundly impactful to certain individuals and that we're not intelligent enough to know why right now we do not have the science to substantiate it. But I most surely know that the person's quality of life is better because of it. And so it's that argument that starts to come forward of how do you drive this forward? How do you create the awareness? How do you get the public to see the values? And because of it, it starts to change voting legislation. It starts to change the way voters see things. It starts to change the way regulators see things. Because what you have is a constituency, a population of people that vote that say, hey, these things have profound impact, they're valuable, and we need to create a way so that we're able to hold them.

[00:48:38.200] - Kevin Jodrey And I think that that's what so much the auction does too is it just starts to put the money in front of people. The money is what they see, the value is what they get taught. And it's throwing money on the table changes a conversation right now far more than begging for help. So instead of having to beg for help, which is really what we need to do, because the small farmers getting decimated, it's to say, listen, we're still valuable, we still have value, and this is the value. And our desire is to protect not just the farmer, but also these incredible plants that have been selected and sifted for time, that have these incredible abilities to do many things that we're just not smart enough to understand. So you can look up in the sky and see the planets and the stars. Well, we didn't understand the difference between them until we started to get telescopes. And then all of a sudden now we see. We knew there was something existing in the soil. Then we have microscopes. Now we can see. That's. What this is to me is it's the beginning of creating a reason to look.

[00:49:47.670] - Kevin Jodrey And the more people can look and understand, the more they're able to take holistic medicine into their own hands. And it starts to empower people in the way that I dream of, which is home cultivators people who find plants that when they consume them, it helps them with depression. When they consume this plant, it helps them with spasticity. When they consume this plant, it helps them with appetite, things that create quality of life. And when you get people to be able to be impacted in that way, all of a sudden you get activists that are about it from a far more profound level. And I think the auction has the ability to create that and launch it. And I know that when we start to be able to create that value, then all of a sudden it makes sense to have unified gene banks. There is no gene bank. People like me were bankers. We're known for banking plants. But now it's so difficult. We have to self them and hold the seed because you can't hold all these plants and where do you hold them? How much nursery space can you devote to your collection when it doesn't have any necessarily commercial value today?

[00:50:58.350] - Kevin Jodrey How do you pay for this? How do you afford it? How do people in California that are allowed to have twelve immature, six mature, how do you hold it? How do you keep it? And so all these problems create this constant reduction in the gene pool and we're losing plants every day. Just like the rainforest. You're chopping it every day, pretty soon you realized you cut everything that had value down and now we don't have the ability to mine it. To me, science is phenomenal as it is, doesn't create a lot. What they do is they study and then they break it apart and they find the individual components and then they patent it and they release it. But plant medicine is a far more sophisticated method. And what we have is we have plants that have these incredible potential values and for those that hold them, a clear value. And it's the ability to get this conversation into the public. It's the ability for the public to understand that we're not fascinated with getting high as much as you think we're fascinated. We're into the benefit we get from the plant. And it might be a high, but not for everyone.

[00:52:13.310] - Kevin Jodrey And so I think that these conversations have to get brought out. And I think the only way you get them to come out, really, is to put a price tag on it. No one gives a shit about a car and say it's a million dollar car, then everybody wants it. There's nobody with a poster of a Kia on their wall, right? There's no Kia posters, but I guarantee there's somebody listening that's got a poster of a Ferrari or a Lamborghini in their lifetime on the wall at our house because it's this perceived scarcity and value. And I think that when we're able to start really showcasing and highlighting this fact, then what it does is it begins the process of creating legitimacy for every crop. Because you have the same problem in Colombia, same problem in Thailand, same problem in Mexico, same problem in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon. You have historical population Africa, historical populations that are being compressed, that are being diluted. And we're not smart enough right now to be able to really preserve and protect. But once you put a price tag on it, all of a sudden it becomes valuable enough to do so, so it drives it.

[00:53:21.190] - Kevin Jodrey But for me, when you start to create that value, the small farmer now can benefit. But the small farmers historically have been pretty good to each other. And I think that once we start to create auction systems and blockchain registration and payments that are real so when they touch the asset, the check gets cut. When they touch it, they don't get the asset, then pay you. When they touch it, it automatically pays you. What you have now is fairness. And it starts to also create the ability for farmers in other countries to work together collaboratively to do joint projects and license those pieces. So for me, what I really want to see is this incredible spider web of cannabis that's existed for eternity really remain. Because without the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you have no broad leaf cannabis. In the United States, there is no indigenous cannabis. We don't have indigenous flour here. And so what we need is we need these relationships to be sustained and we need them to be beneficial to all people. And I think for the first time, the small farmer in the United States really understands they are small farmers, they're not drug dealers.

[00:54:37.370] - Kevin Jodrey Drug dealers get paid, farmers get fucked. And so, for the first time, everyone in America is recognizing, whoa, cannabis is not what it was. And we've developed a love affair with it, and a relationship and an art form in cultivating it. How do we maintain it and how do you preserve it for the generations that come after the original stock? And I love science and I love working with genomic work and I like the ideas of AI. But at the end of the day, people have been consuming hash in Pakistan for 4000 years. They're still working with the same lines. Somehow it worked. Some reason they were happy, some reason it's there. And I just really would love to understand at some point why, and then make sure we preserve that base material so that what we have is the building blocks to move forward.

[00:55:37.250] - Lelehnia Dubois Yeah, and I just want to add to that how we see this. I think Kevin alluded to this pretty well with the international is this isn't just about us, and can we sell these cuts for a really high price. We believe that once people start understanding that value better, that everybody's cuts are going to elevate in price. One way that we are directly trying to get this particular cut, the skunk one out, is through the grow off. By partnering with the grow off, they're doing a unique grow off where they're actually telling everybody what the cut is and that'll get it out to at least 30 to 50 farms. And those farms will have that cut after the auction. And our hope is that after the auction, those cuts will be even of more value. And what will be really interesting is some of those microclimates, because it is a very diverse region up here in the Emerald Triangle, some of those cuts might not do so good in certain climates. And now all of a sudden, maybe we only have six farms that really can grow this to its optimal self. Suddenly those six farms, the value, their value just increases considerably because there are only six farms out of, say, Trinity, Mendo, Humboldt, say, maybe 1000 farms that can actually produce this in the expression that is so desired the vision.

[00:57:22.670] - Lelehnia Dubois The theory is that by the time the auction is over, that all most farms in the community will have elevated in value because we will have educated how to look at the plant a little differently. And people like Kevin is saying will start valuing the artists and how those.

[00:57:43.130] - Kevin Jodrey Expressions come out, the crops worth more. If you sold the plant for $60,000, you would assume that the product must be a higher value, because otherwise why would you spend 60 grand for a clone? And so what it starts to do is it starts to allow smaller cultivators to have higher valuation. And you have an ability also with these type of things, is to start to bring awareness to the Appalachian models about certain regions, produce certain things better, but not everything better. And so it starts to allow you to stratify the lane. Like right now, we're in one lane, we're all in the same exact road, and we're getting run over by big trucks. The big trucks should be on highway five. We need the cars on 101. And that's the situation now. It's all one giant pipeline of movement, but it needs to be spread apart so that what you're able to do is not have to compete with these larger entities, because you shouldn't have to, because you're producing a different product. It's not about, we both run the same plant, but mine's a little better. Well, yours is twice is half the price.

[00:59:00.580] - Kevin Jodrey So it becomes a moot argument. It's when they don't have something specific. And the auction also does some interesting stuff because it starts to allow you to find where valuations exist and what things are perceived to be valuable. And you as an operator could even say, I want to place something up for bid. And you put a reserve on it so that it sets a high price. It'll let you get a pretty clear idea of what the valuation is, even if you don't sell it. Because really what you're trying to find out is what's the traction, the stickiness of this object? And once you know that you put a $60,000 reserve, you got up to 45 on the bid, it lets you know that what you're holding is something worth $45,000. That allows you now to be able to advertise that with your product. It's any tool possible to me, because really, we're just getting the living shit kicked out of us as small. There's no other way to put it. There's no euphemisms that go with this one. Oh, it's going to be a great day. We're talking it's a bloodbath. And it'll be a bloodbath in every single state in the United States, no matter what we do, and each country that comes online, the barriers to moving product become extremely prohibitive.

[01:00:23.940] - Kevin Jodrey So when you take the groups in Pakistan and you say, listen, you need to be EUGMP standards to move this, then all of a sudden, who actually has the ability to do that? Who can create a factory that's at that level? And so the idea of getting valuations increased to increase the desire for people to work with them gives them a better competitive advantage. And for me, I've been in this most of my life since I've been twelve years old. I've been involved in weed and I'm 57. So I just realized as the years went on, it was really the diversity of our community that makes it so fascinating to me. And the diversity of the gene pool that people chose to work with and what they got out of it and how they directed it. And I don't want to see that end in my lifetime. So if I had some ability to push any of this information forward, it's great. And because I'm not the one who's saying, hey, this is my model, you can come and use my business, it's honest. Because really, I'm just a volunteer. So it's a helpful position.

[01:01:35.570] - Kevin Jodrey And I'm just trying to help create the validity on someone who buys and sells jeans. So if I wanted to buy the product, this is what I want to know. This is the proof that I want, this is the challenge that I want to see presented, and this is how I want it delivered to me. And that way what it does, it creates a pretty good idea of what's expected to sell. But I believe that once you start to create this model, then it allows you to have small cultivators work collaboratively to say, hey, I think that we could do something together. And little by little, we start to unite the people in a way they need. Because for so many of us that were in cannabis, the reason why we were in cannabis there was many reasons, but one of them is because we don't want to have to have a job listening to someone give. US a ration of shit all day and then have to wear a fucking data logger to let make sure I'm not moving my feet quick enough. It gave us autonomy, but that very autonomy that we lived under for so long crippled us when it went into legal, because we didn't know how to work collaboratively quick enough, and we got steamrolled by people who did.

[01:02:45.530] - Kevin Jodrey And so now, whoever's existing and surviving or new people coming in, what we can have is a new development of the culture in a way where there's a collaborative functioning. And because there's no illegalities to the degree there was prior, it allows people to be able to operate in a more transparent fashion and team up. And as good as we were at what we did, we weren't best at everything. So I always use the example I wired so many operations. But I'm not an electrician. I just happen to understand electrical theory and I know how to wire an operation. I hire electricians now. I don't have to hire one that I'm afraid that he's going to go tell somebody when he's drinking, that he wired up a hot job up my hill in a bunker. It can now be normal hires. And so I think that that's the part that comes in here, is that you start to get people to work together and form their own support systems. And at the end of the day, without the product, there is no industry. So to me, the customer is always most important because without the customer, you're growing for yourself, right?

[01:03:54.830] - Kevin Jodrey And so that's a great conversation, but usually you don't bid 60 grand for a plant you're going to grow yourself unless you're wealthy and you really need it. For most, it's a little simpler, but for what we're talking about, it's the ability to start creating incentive and then creating an ability to have camaraderie, to start having regions that create products that develop and work in other regions. So things that I do in my microclimate would be able to work in other microclimates similar to wine, where you data log the crop and you know, what the conditions were that gutted up to that level of residual sugars and what you received from the squeeze. That information now is valuable because we can take grapes that we used in one country and transplant to another. So the Malbec from France is now heavily grown in Argentina. So you have French wine, French grape, that's just killing it in other countries because they found where it was optimized. And why can't that be our future down the road? So it may not be our future today, but if we start to create the conversations, create the valuations, create the benefits, create the conversation, then all of a sudden that's a potential.

[01:05:15.610] - Kevin Jodrey And I think it'll happen a lot quicker than Wine did just because the world's moving at a faster pace than everything.

[01:05:23.630] - Lelehnia Dubois Yeah. I want to add, Kevin said that this is an all volunteer project. Humboldt Grace is a dream maker project of a nonprofit out of Humboldt County called the Ink People, and they support programs that are supporting the arts and the culture of these communities. And so it's really been an incredible project where people are coming to the table on their own time. We're more like an incubator in creating solutions because there's so many great mindsets. We have another program that we did. These regions were hit by fires really hard last year, in the year before, and we created a project called the Humboldt Grace Fire Recovery Project. And we gave out over eight $500 vouchers to folks back to the landers, cannabis farmers, community members that were impacted by those fires. So this auction does auction off cultivars and does make money for those breeders. But it also is about supporting the community as a whole, because we survive this for so many years and for generations, because we do all work together and collaborate. That's a part of our mission statement is to empower, collaborate and educate. We also are coming up with a show.

[01:07:09.150] - Lelehnia Dubois It's going to come out in June. Kevin is going to be the host of that show. I'll be behind the scenes producing it. We have a great Berkeley filmmaker from UC Berkeley Film School that's going to help us edit it. And we'll be getting it out through multiple networks, but US Weed Channel will be one of them. So really we're this amazing group of people that want to empower all these farmers and all of our community. We can't always directly make that happen, such as Monetarily or giving the cuts away. But everything we build just because of how we were developed and who we are as a group, we believe in the Butterfly effect, or some people have called my effect the Dragonfly Effect. And so we build to create positive impact overall and hope to see it empower lots of small farmers and lots of legacy breeders.

[01:08:14.550] - Elijah I feel like I ended on a tough question before I let you all go. Was there anything in particular you all wanted to bring up or talk about?

[01:08:25.030] - Lelehnia Dubois Yeah, tune in. Look, check us out on our Instagram. I just switched it's. The Humboldt legacy project and the Humboldt Grace legacy project on Instagram. And then there's Humboldt Grace, and you can find Kevin under Kevinjaudry, and you can find me under Lania Leila Dubois. But tune in because this is truly a grassroots 1000% volunteer effort. So we roll out in steps, but we've been working really hard for two and a half years and we're gearing up to roll out a lot of steps. And the first one is this show that Kevin is going to be hosting around the Legacy Project, and he's going to be interviewing some amazing people outside of our community that are involved in science and technology, such as the owners of Canopy Right, who are one of our partners. Kevin McKernan from Medicinal Genomics. His first interview is with an amazing plant scientist from Morocco. And this gentleman has centuries of legacy around this plant and is also an incredible but plant scientist. Islamabad Ryan Lee is going to come on, who was David Watson's partner, so he has lots to share around the Skunk conversation and is also brilliant.

[01:09:58.950] - Lelehnia Dubois So please just check us out and tune in for that programming because there's going to be a lot more really in depth. We're taking all the pieces apart that make the Legacy Project auction possible and putting them into episodes so people can absorb this more and get more value from it that way as well. Kev.

[01:10:25.230] - Kevin Jodrey Yeah. I would just like to say thank you, Elijah and the Bluegrass Podcast for having us on and taking the time to break this down in the way I've known you personally for a while, and I just respect you immensely for who you are. As a personalizer, you've been nothing but a class act. And so it's always a privilege to get to be around people that you respect, that you want to work with. So I'm grateful that you took the time to let us be on your show and let your listeners catch some of the information. And I hope there was some value that got transferred and starts to get some conversation about how do small farms, small farm communities work together collaboratively to maintain that life. It can't be decimated everywhere. You can't consolidate all people into the machine. There has to be enough places for everyone to find a place. And I think that so many of us that got into cannabis found our place. It's just that with the changes in laws and the monetization of it, it made it very difficult to compete. And I really would love to see the auction have a reverse effect, where it allows us to bring attention and awareness to what we did, what we're doing, who is creating, who might come in to create.

[01:11:46.790] - Kevin Jodrey And the incredible diversity and complexity of the cannabis plant in a way that just really starts to bring a different level of attention to what's taking place. So that hopefully small cannabis farmers exist in the future. Because at this point, right now, if you're in the emerald triangle, it's an endangered population. If this was like an animal, you'd get a federal protection right now because there's so few of us left, and that's not the goal at all. And it doesn't allow people who desire this type of life to be able to come in if there is no position left. And so hopefully the work that was done does something really positive long term, so that when I'm no longer here, people are still able to cultivate and homestead and live a pretty holistic life, which is a gift.

[01:12:38.090] - Elijah Well, thank you for being so complimentary. That was very flattering. Thank you all for doing the work and having put in the work before me and before other people. I mean, I just get the chance to try and work on what you all have already done. So thank you.

[01:12:54.830] - Kevin Jodrey You're doing a good job.

[01:12:56.910] - Lelehnia Dubois Thank you. Legacy has turned into this word, right, that everybody's using in the cannabis industry and this particular group, we see legacy as honoring what came before us, but also building a pathway forward that can be honored for those that are after us. So thank you for being a part of that and helping us lead that. And please tell your constituents in Kentucky, because we know you've got some hills up there that have some magic brewing going on. That to protect those beans. Hang on to those things, get them in canopy, right? Maybe you can't do something today with them. But what the future holds. I think food is seeing what happens when you don't develop industries on seed crops and you develop them in labs. And the patients are what made us legal. And we need to ensure that our medicines get through, because that's what got us here in the first place, was being of medicine. And this industry is quickly heading towards a mono crop if we don't advocate for these old stabilized genetics to get in the door.

[01:14:23.290] - Elijah Absolutely. And that's my hope. I'm like, all right, how can we jump start this with information from other places on even though legalization doesn't happen here until 25, how can we just get ahead of the curve and already have it to where we can get some of those protections like you all are talking about and like canopy, right? Just get some of those answers before we have to run into that wall.

[01:14:49.250] - Kevin Jodrey Even if you don't use the tools, it's the awareness. And so much of this stuff for me is to make people aware that these things are possible and that you have to be able to look past the trouble you're in right now, the struggle, and understand where you might end up. And if we end up in a decent place, you don't want to end up there just with yourself. Hopefully you can bring others with you and the things that you really enjoyed. So, so much of it is just to understand that it's to get the conversation out so that even if out of 100, only ten do something, ten is better than none. And I think that really the beginning of it, is you're trying to seed the new generation. And because we can talk freely about it now due to legalization and the Internet allows these conversations to spread so wildly, it starts to get people to be able to discuss. And whether they agree or disagree, it begins a conversation. And because I'm not trying to sell you a product, it's just more to sell you an idea that the things you touch are valuable.

[01:15:55.180] - Kevin Jodrey You're valuable, and you need to make sure that you understand that so that you don't get sold short and lose out on the quality of life that you've worked so hard for.

[01:16:08.250] - Elijah Thank you for listening. If you're a bluegrass, country or singer songwriter, send in your submissions. We feature one song per episode and would love to play yours. Also, did you know that our store is up and available? Grab a set of our new bluegrass Banjo Stickers die cut and made of long lasting vinyl so that you can help put the grass back in the bluegrass. Available on bluegrasscannabis.com. If you'd like to follow us on social media, we are at Bluegrass Cannabis, on Instagram, at Bluegrass Hemp, on Facebook, at Blue Grass cannabis on TikTok, and at Bluegrass Canna on Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe and never miss an episode wherever you listen to podcasts, we're available on YouTube, itunes, spotify and more. Thank you so much for listening and stopping by. The Bluegrass podcast. Old fashioned, all natural Kentucky bluegrass.