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Nobody likes to hear \u201cI told you so\u201d ringing in their ears. But today, as California\u2019s small cannabis farmers face increasing challenges in the legal industry, the sneering refrain practically echoes down the redwood canyons of the Emerald Triangle, its four cutting syllables carried in each morning with the fog.<\/p>\n
For Casey O\u2019Neill, who has one of the most public and outspoken advocates for a small-farm-friendly version of cannabis legalization since 2014, the \u201cI told you so\u201d carries a particular punch. He is a native son of Mendocino County, raised on a homestead north of Laytonville where he still lives, farming vegetables and cannabis on the land with his partner Amber and their family. He\u2019s seen the harsh nature of the government. Law enforcement stormed his parents\u2019 house before his third birthday over a few cannabis plants, and when he was older and working as a cannabis grower, he was swept up in a raid and served two months in county jail.<\/p>\n But by the time California started to seriously consider cannabis legalization in the 2010s, O\u2019Neill believed it was a good idea. Legal pot, he thought, was a great way to support small farmers and California\u2019s rural economies and keep people out of prison. He still trusts in this vision. Where he thinks he might have been wrong, in retrospect, is in judging the government\u2019s ability to actually execute those policies.<\/p>\n \u201cI went in with this possibly na\u00efve idea that we were going to construct a regulatory paradigm that was built around small businesses \u2014 and we came f*cking close, that\u2019s the devastating part,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cI invested significant time, energy and faith in a governmental process and then had that faith shattered. And now, all of the old hippies are like, \u2018I f*cking told you so. You f*cking thought they were going to play fair?\u2019 It\u2019s really disenchanting.\u201d<\/p>\n The year 2016 may feel like 10,000 lifetimes ago, but it\u2019s worth remembering that before California passed its adult-use cannabis legislation, it was extremely rare for cannabis growers to speak proudly and openly about their craft in the halls of power. O\u2019Neill was one of the handful that stepped forward.<\/p>\n As a board member for the Emerald Growers Association, O\u2019Neill spent the mid-2010s speaking in front of the Mendocino County supervisors and to state legislators in Sacramento about how cannabis legalization could be a crucial lifeline for small farmers. In his straw hat, skin roughed by the sun, and cotton work clothes, O\u2019Neill made the case over and over that cannabis growers were simply small farmers that needed support.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Amber and I, for quite a long time we were almost like the funny stepchildren. We didn\u2019t really fit with the food farmers because we were cannabis farmers, and vice versa,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cThe central focus of advocacy for me has been to break down that false bifurcation.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill spent his youth farming only cannabis, but after his 2008 arrest for growing, he switched to farming vegetables in 2009.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was going through my court case, I realized: I\u2019m a monocrop farmer and I just lost my crop,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cI had some cogitation around what I want my future to look like and I started to look at food farming.\u201d<\/p>\n He took a few courses on farming vegetables and fertilizers before he began serving time, and in jail, had a job working in the jail garden and read as many books on organic farming as he could from the jail library.<\/p>\n \u201cThe running joke is that my friends say, \u2018It seems you were effectively rehabilitated,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Neill says with a laugh.<\/p>\n In 2010, the state of California took its first big swing at legalizing cannabis with Proposition 19. At the time, the terms of O\u2019Neill\u2019s probation kept him from cultivating cannabis and he didn\u2019t take much of a public stance on the issue. The effort ultimately failed, with all three Emerald Triangle counties voting against the proposition.<\/p>\n Then in 2014, a coalition including California\u2019s police chiefs sponsored a cannabis regulation bill, SB 1262. The state\u2019s medical cannabis industry despised it. O\u2019Neill, who had gotten off probation and formed a medical marijuana collective in 2013, started advocating against it \u2014 and for a vision for legalization that included bringing California\u2019s thousands of underground cannabis farmers into compliance.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2014, the police chief sponsored a bill in the state legislature that would have licensed 30 farms in the state,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a de facto lockout for our whole community. That was what really got us organized.\u201d<\/p>\n He worked as the secretary of the Emerald Growers Association and a board member of the Mendocino Cannabis Policy Council. He hosted events, talked to lawmakers, and helped cannabis advocates come up with a plan for small-farmer-friendly cannabis legalization.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery other industry sends lobbyists to tell government how to think, so finally as an industry, we are realizing if this is how it works in America, we are going to have to play ball,\u201d\u00a0O\u2019Neill told the Associated Press in 2015<\/a>, before he and other members of the Emerald Growers Association went off to lobby assemblymembers in Sacramento.<\/p>\n After months of work at the state level, Proposition 64 was born: a plan to legalize cannabis with regulations coming from the Department of Agriculture, no cap on licenses, appellations and tiered licensing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we were successful,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cComing out of 2015, we thought \u2018Wow this is going to work! Holy sh*t!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In November 2016, California voted to pass\u00a0Prop. 64<\/a>. All three counties of the Emerald Triangle voted in favor, though by small margins. But O\u2019Neill says the vision for small farmers only partially achieved.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the one hand, it has worked. I am here. The state has been here and inspected this farm and we\u2019re legal,\u201d says O\u2019Neill. \u201cOn the other hand for so many other farmers, it didn\u2019t f*cking work.\u201d<\/p>\n And this discrepancy has been challenging for O\u2019Neill to come to terms with.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so bittersweet. To feel both that I\u2019ve been tremendously successful and a total f*cking failure at the same time is one of the most potent dichotomies of my life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n So what went wrong?<\/p>\n I visited O\u2019Neill one warm autumn day on his family\u2019s homestead,\u00a0HappyDay Farms<\/a>, in the hills outside of Laytonville. As he watered vegetable sprouts in a hoop house, O\u2019Neill rattled off examples of how differently California regulates vegetables versus adult-use cannabis.<\/p>\n From the price of scales to cottage licenses, it boils down to two main issues: cannabis involves mountains more paperwork and bundles more cash.<\/p>\n HappyDay Farm\u2019s permit to sell vegetables costs $25 a year, O\u2019Neill says. Its permit to sell cannabis from Mendocino County costs $675, plus a $1,300 application fee, plus $2,410 for a permit from the state government, plus $1,800 to the state water board, plus $625 to the Department of Fish & Wildlife, plus $750 for its rainwater collection pond \u2014 and we haven\u2019t even gotten to taxes yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not even nickel and diming me, it\u2019s hundred and two hundred-ing me,\u201d O\u2019Neill says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a classic example of regulatory creep in which a given populace with very little political power runs up against a regulatory development process in which every agency is excited and waiting to do things they aren\u2019t allowed to do with the agricultural industry because their lobby is too strong,\u201d O\u2019Neill says, breaking down the issue with his trademark mix of political verbosity and casual profanity. \u201cIt\u2019s like the state is saying to us, \u2018We\u2019re going to f*ck you guys up.\u2019 It\u2019s been really frustrating. I\u2019ve been an advocate of sensible regulations and at every step of the way they\u2019re pushing back and saying, \u2018No, not really.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n HappyDay Farms isn\u2019t a large operation. It\u2019s tucked on a sun-splattered hillside, with terraces that O\u2019Neill and his family built in 2012 and rocky soil they\u2019ve been carefully building up for years with compost and perennialized plants.<\/p>\n With the base cost of running a cannabis farm so high, the state has essentially forced cannabis farmers to work on a large scale in order to meet those costs. To combat this big-ag-favoring paradigm, O\u2019Neill is advocating for a cottage license for cannabis farms with less than 2,500 square feet of cannabis canopy that includes an exemption from all regulations except testing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe fought really, really hard for a cottage license in the cannabis industry, so they made a cottage license,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cBut with cottage food production, a cottage license means that you are exempt from a lot of regulations. With cottage cannabis licenses, it\u2019s just a nice name.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, California put forth cannabis regulations after Prop. 64 that don\u2019t prohibit people from stacking multiple cottage licenses together to make a large grow. Perhaps most controversially, the regulations also do not include the acreage cap that state law mandated, which would have kept cannabis farms below one acre until 2023.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill also takes issue with the state\u2019s track-and-trace system (\u201cIt\u2019s the dumbest time-suck nightmare stupidest thing in history period.\u201d) and the state\u2019s general attitude that cannabis growers are presumed to be criminals from the outset and must be tightly regulated (\u201cIt\u2019s like \u2018Star Wars\u2019: \u2018The more you tighten your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.\u2019\u201d).<\/p>\n Plus, in 2019, the state of California started ramping up enforcement actions against those farmers who hadn\u2019t joined the legal cannabis industry yet.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s the talking point that people chose not to get a permit and now they have to pay some consequences,\u201d says O\u2019Neill. \u201cThe assumption of choice in the matter is where the real travesty occurs. If you build a system that locks people out and then you blame them for not participating in that system, that\u2019s social injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n These farmers, who haven\u2019t signed up for the paperwork and the taxes and the regulations, have good reason to mistrust the state. They too fear hearing \u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n For about an hour, O\u2019Neill has been walking me around the farm. We\u2019ve been working our way slowly up and down the terraced hillside, stopping to smell the massive colas of Glueberry, Great Success, Ogreberry and other\u00a0exceptional strains<\/a>\u00a0HappyDay has finishing in the autumn sun. It\u2019s a jarring juxtaposition: Beautiful scenery, depressing conversation.<\/p>\n But even the conversation itself contains multitudes: O\u2019Neill is quick to laugh, quick to empathize, quick to pepper quips into a dark realization. We\u2019ve talked ourselves in circles about O\u2019Neill\u2019s history advocating for cannabis and about the impact he\u2019s had, what it means, whether or not it\u2019s been positive. And on each topic, we\u2019ve returned again and again to a dialectic understanding that the good and bad are simultaneously true.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always both,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cThe truth lies in between.\u201d<\/p>\n For O\u2019Neill, a farmer who has made regenerative practices the backbone of HappyDay\u2019s work and his own advocacy, it comes back to the land.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing to me in terms of advocacy around the regenerative movement is look, we all are where we are,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re all trying to figure out how to get to some as-yet-undefined better. Every year, we make strides in that direction. We try and lower inputs, lower our carbon footprint, we try and sequester more carbon so we\u2019re offsetting our footprint. But there are inevitable compromises, like keeping our rabbits in cages.\u201d<\/p>\n With improving as a farmer and a human, while asking the state to improve as an advocate, O\u2019Neill has taken a nuanced approach to the idea of progress.<\/p>\n \u201cYou try to make measurable gains and measurable steps in the right direction each year,\u201d he says. \u201cYou get better in your practices, you learn more, and that\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, are you an advocate for marijuana?<\/p>\n The post The Price of Advocacy<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Nobody likes to hear \u201cI told you so\u201d ringing in their ears. But today, as California\u2019s small cannabis farmers face increasing challenges in the legal industry, the sneering refrain practically echoes down the redwood canyons of the Emerald Triangle, its four cutting syllables carried in each morning with the fog.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":41867,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2252,148,50,13436,5,13437,85,13438],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41866"}],"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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41868,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41866\/revisions\/41868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happydayfarm-4.jpg\")
Fighting for the Right to Farm<\/h4>\n
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<\/figure>\nThe State\u2019s Plan for Pot<\/h4>\n
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<\/figure>\nHope Springs Eternal<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The Price of Advocacy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"