I always assumed that the reason we used to import weed in bales from those places, was because the weed from those places was unique unto itself. It was wild...but not wild as in hemp-wild. It was wild in terms of having to be from that place where it grew and evolved through open pollination naturally for a long, long, LONG time.
When there wasn't as much variety to choose from in those days, it was easy to recognize the type of weed just from the look and smell. I remember getting quarter pounds of Red Columbian where the buds were almost chocolate brown colored, full of seeds and had a smell that was like caramel. Oaxacan was bright green, leafy with almost jet-black, oily seeds and it tasted like moss in a delicious kind of way. I remember Thai sticks that were leafy with hues of blue-green and tan and a smell like spicy chai tea mixed with Kiwi shoe polish....Hawaiian sinsemilla that tasted like the whole spice cabinet fell off the kitchen wall. Contrast that with all of the complex hybrids that exist now....Everything just gets mixed and combined until it all ends up tasting the same. As an analogy, we used to go to the movie theater and order a "Graveyard" soda from the concession stand. That was where you combined all the different flavors of soda into one cup. It was delicious! It didn't taste like Coke, Root Beer, 7-Up, Orange and Dr Pepper. It was a combination of everything. But, what if every soda became a Graveyard? What if all you wanted was some Orange Crush or some 7-Up, etc.? Nope. It's all Graveyard, now. You can't get the individual components -just the combination of all of them. That's where the difference is. That old, landrace weed really was unique and it was consistently-unique...It was recognizable. Each type was very individualized. They were their own flavor. The reason why we lost those unique tastes is because they all just got jumbled together into another version of the Graveyard.