Compare to other normal legal crops not really. Pot is a really easy plant to grow, it’s really easy to grow well. The irrigation system needs more supervision than the plants. Once a week trips, maybe twice if the weather gets destructive.
Pot even grows in the desert. It’s such a prolific weed that the US Eradication Program have never been stopped.
It was excellent cow feed and in the ‘50s I witness Feds still hitting dairy farms and burning plants.
There was no Google Earth back then but they seemed to know where the stuff was even though it had be ‘lost’ migrating into the trees.
At these big Mexican grows they usually leave at least a couple of people camped out to tend to the grows, more for the bigger grows. I don't know why everyone thinks growing pot is so easy. They have to clear out a growing area, plant seeds or clones, take care of these plants, water them, fertilize them. Take care of pests and plant diseases. If they are going for seedless plants they have to either start with clones or inspect the plants often to see if any are turning male so they can pull them before they pollinate the females. When the plants flower they have to watch them and pull those that are ready to dry when they are just ripe enough, not too early and not too late or they won't be as potent. Then they have to dry them just right avoiding mold, and those growing premium grade stuff will actually cure it after they have it dried most of the way. They have to remove each bud from every dried plant and trim the leaves off them for sale, all by hand. This is all no small amount of work, especially when you consider that these grows are generally done in rugged terrain miles away from any roads. They don't get to use tractors and combines and all those other modern farm implements that making farming easier and more productive today. From all I've read and heard about the process it seems a lot harder to grow pot in the woods than it does to have big fields of other crops you plant and harvest mechanically. Of course they make a lot more money per acre of pot than they ever could with legal crops, so I guess that makes all the work worthwhile to them.