The post California Weed Farmers Are Challenging State Grow Regulations appeared first on High Times.
In an effort to fight against the looming threat of cannabis corporatization, California weed farmers are challenging state grow regulations. Small-scale growers were dismayed when the regulations overseeing the legal cannabis economy were released by California state authorities last year, placing no effective limits on acreage that can be used by a single grower.
This led to fears that agribusiness could convert huge holdings in the Salinas and Central valleys to cannabis cultivation, and force the traditional small growers of the Emerald Triangle off the market.
Now the California Growers Association is challenging the regulations in the courts, demanding a one-acre cannabis grow cap.
The California Growers Association
Representing more than 1,000 cannabis cultivators and businesses in communities throughout the state, the California Growers Association filed its suit against the Department of Food & Agriculture regulations in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 24.
The group’s press release cites the text of Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative to establish a legal cannabis market in California. Prop 64 stated that it “ensures the nonmedical marijuana industry in California will be built around small and medium-sized businesses…”
Prop 64, formally the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, and its enabling legislation, the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act, establish a five-year transition period during which small and medium-size growers are to be protected before the state may issue large-scale cultivation licenses.
But the California Growers Association argues that the new regulations include a loophole that allows a single corporation “to obtain and aggregate unlimited smaller cultivation licenses to operate a cultivation site larger than the legal limit.”
The regulations do limit the number of one-acre grow licenses