Lettuce dominated 2016 in Monterey County. The question is, when does cannabis make the list?

When Monterey County’s annual crop report for 2016 was released June 27, lettuce held the number-one spot for the highest-value crop. But another type of green—cannabis—was nowhere on the list of 26, although it’s having an impact on the local ag industry.

Medical cannabis was cited in the crop report as the reason why the value of nursery crops were down 12 percent in 2016, as dozens of greenhouses across the county are being converted into growhouses. And with the legalization of recreational marijuana on the horizon, it’s a very real question for the county Agricultural Commissioner’s office.

“That’s the million-dollar question, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Agricultural Commissioner Eric Lauritzen said at a press conference. He said it will take a couple of years to see how the industry evolves, especially in light of the fact that marijuana is still illegal by federal standards.

Ryan Munevar, executive director of Monterey County NORML, a legalization advocacy group, says cannabis growers want pot to be classified as an agricultural product instead of a “weird crop” that faces regulations from an array of governmental agencies more fit for medicines and alcohol.

“That’s the easiest way to handle it, the one with the least restrictions,” Munevar says. “It’s literally just another crop.”

Considering bureaucratic hurdles, he estimates it could take 10-15 years for it to be labeled as an agricultural crop.

As for legal crops, those totaled $4.3 billion in the county last year, down by 9.5 percent from 2015. Lauritzen and other industry representatives attribute that drop to 2015 being a record year thanks to unusually high produce pricing.