{"id":23686,"date":"2018-02-13T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/02\/13\/regulations-shut-out-small-ca-cannabis-farmers\/"},"modified":"2018-02-15T00:44:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T08:44:38","slug":"regulations-shut-out-small-ca-cannabis-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/02\/13\/regulations-shut-out-small-ca-cannabis-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Regulations Shut Out Small CA Cannabis Farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Small cannabis growers from Monterey County to Calaveras County are facing local regulations that are making it difficult or impossible to compete with large, permitted grows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I<\/span>f California supplies most of America with its marijuana \u2014 and it does \u2014Monterey County is vying hard to supply most of California\u2019s cannabis.<\/p>\n

Monterey County is home to the Salinas Valley, which holds the famously fertile soils that have put strawberries, spinach and lettuce on dining room tables from coast-to-coast and served as literary inspiration for the great American author John Steinbeck. Here, greenhouses measuring hundreds of thousands of square feet large were left derelict for decades, after the flower industry decamped to cheaper venues overseas. Today, however, these greenhouses have found new life as cannabis super-farms backed by venture capital.<\/p>\n

Like a Steinbeck novel, marijuana production in Monterey County adheres to a dynamic of high-and-low, have-and-have-not.<\/p>\n

In the valley sit the greenhouses with investors and county permits, granted because of this location\u2019s zoning law and its easy access to towns and freeways.<\/p>\n

Those in the valley are the newcomers. Up in the rugged mountains, deep in the crags near Big Sur, are the \u201cprofessionals,\u201d the barely reformed outlaws who have been growing pot in old-growth forests for years, in much the same fashion as has been done in the \u201cEmerald Triangle\u201d far to the north, on the other side of San Francisco.<\/p>\n

These mountain growers have experience, history and legendary strains \u2014 but they can\u2019t get permits. They\u2019re locked out of what\u2019s supposed to be a $7 billion legal cannabis economy in California, and have to stand and watch as the valley-dwellers seize a livelihood that\u2019s historically been theirs \u2014 and, according to the promises made by the Adult Use of Marijuana Act which legalized adult-use cannabis in California<\/a> in 2016, was supposed to be theirs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What happened? In Monterey, regulators have permitted only the greenhouses in the valleys in areas specifically zoned for farming. As written, county law prohibits \u201crural cannabis farming,\u201d per the San Jose Mercury News,<\/a>\u00a0creating a forbidden zone in California cultivation\u2019s historic home. (Imagine a world in which Iowans suddenly made corn and hog farming illegal on prairie land.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0happening? In short, a pattern. According to the California Growers Association, a lobby group for cannabis cultivators, what\u2019s going on in Monterey is being repeated across California.<\/p>\n

In Calaveras County, several hours\u2019 drive away from coastal Monterey in the foothills below Yosemite National Park, cannabis growing helped farmers rebound from a brutal 2015 wildfire. Those livelihoods are now all gone, after\u00a0the county Board of Supervisors banned all cultivation in the county beyond the six-plant minimum for personal use.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey promised us Proposition 64 could rejuvenate the farming industry and upgrade agriculture and bring this great thing,\u201d said Big Sur grower Oliver Bates, the 40-year-old president of the new Big Sur Farmers Association, according to the San Jose Mercury News. \u201cWe feel shut out, betrayed. They are only listening to the interests of commercial agricultural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bates is a prime example of California cultivation\u2019s past. His off-the-grid spread can only be reached on foot, via a steep trail reachable only after six miles of 4\u00d74-ing up a tiny dangerous road. That\u2019s the reason why he\u2019s not permitted, county staff say, because they can\u2019t get there and neither can sheriff\u2019s deputies. That\u2019s not entirely true, say the farmers who still tell tales of visits from cops riding helicopters descending for raids.<\/p>\n

How\u2019s this going to end? With more helicopters or with a revision of Monterey\u2019s laws to allow marijuana to continue to exist in the mountains and the valleys? Steinbeck would approve.<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong> do you think small farmers should be protected by regulations?<\/p>\n

The post Regulations Shut Out Small CA Cannabis Farmers<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: Regulations Shut Out Small CA Cannabis Farmers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small cannabis growers from Monterey County to Calaveras County are facing local regulations that are making it difficult or impossible to compete with large, permitted grows. If California supplies most of America with its marijuana \u2014 and it does \u2014Monterey County is vying hard to supply most of California\u2019s cannabis.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,5,100,306,3304],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23687,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23686\/revisions\/23687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}