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The whole pipeline in one place: wrap up and sources
This series walked through the full processing pipeline, from harvest grading to the last ethanol wash. Here is the whole thing in one post, with the sources, so it survives as a reference.
The system: grade everything at harvest into four classes. A is top colas, kept as flower. B is the mid buds, dried, cured and run through hydrocarbon for vape carts. C is the popcorn and larf from the bucker, washed into bubble hash. D is the sugar trim, sieved into full-spectrum kief for static sift, with the sieve oversize going to a QWET ethanol wash for golden shatter.
The model: a 1 kg dry plant splits roughly 270 g A, 255 g B, 150 g C, 215 g D, 110 g stem. Training moves it. SCROG is the biggest lever.
The value, farm-gate ranges: A at R60 to R150 a gram, B extract at R60 to R180, C hash at R80 to R200, D kief and shatter at R100 to R250. A plant runs R22,000 to R60,000 on paper. Reality lands near the low end, and only with buyers attached.
The build order: static sift, then bubble, then QWET, then hydrocarbon.
The honest version of the farmer question: license and offtake come before yield. The market is the bottleneck, not the sun.
Where the numbers come from. The trim to flower ratios sit in commercial trimming data: outdoor trim runs 25 to 40 percent of flower weight, bud to trim around 3 to 1. The SCROG yield range of 20 to 40 percent is a well reported figure across grower literature. The extraction yields and the SA market figures, the 550 tonnes, the 8,500 stores, the R5.5 billion formal market, come from our research folder, which pulls from SA regulatory reporting and market analyses. Everything here is a planning estimate, not a quote, and prices will move when the licensed market opens.
The hub page with the full comparison and the economics model: https://420forums.co.za/processing-pipeline-farmer-economics/
The getting started guide for new growers: https://420forums.co.za/commercial-cannabis-cultivation-in-south-africa-getting-started/
If you have questions, ask in the regional forums. The provincial threads in this series work through the same numbers for each part of the country, and the details differ more than most people expect.