A large portion of the grow ops are owned by Chinese groups. This is "common knowledge" in circles where people want to grow weed as a business, at scale, and scope out their competitors. This is their competition. The small local growers are not a competition anymore than your mom and pop business is competition to Amazon.

People find this surprising, but they've never stopped to ask themselves where did all that weed and infrastructure to grow it suddenly spring up from the moment it was legalized.