It's strange to try to prevent a plant from being grown on farmland, but I think our civic politicians were on to something.
Those over at municipal hall were informed recently by provincial Agriculture Minister Norm Letnick that their bylaw prohibiting medical marijuana from being grown on farmland had been quashed. It was reasoned by both the Agricultural Land Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture that the production of medical marijuana is consistent with the definition of farm use in provincial legislation.
It's hard to argue with that logic because when you boil it down, what we're talking about is growing a plant that can be harvested for commercial consumption. But - and this is a pretty significant but - it must be noted this isn't any old plant. We're not talking about blueberries or potatoes or any of the other crops that dot Delta's landscape.
This commodity comes with its own unique set of circumstances that makes it unlike any other, which in turn makes applying the basic definition of agriculture problematic. It's why there are strict federal regulations, particularly with regards to security, and why Delta prefers to see medical marijuana operations located in industrial areas.
Municipal leaders didn't see it as a fit for farmland and they weren't alone as several other jurisdictions in the province also sought to ban the growing of medical marijuana in agricultural areas. Victoria clearly wasn't on the same page, so now we've got the prospect of these operations setting up shop on agricultural land.
Obviously the crop can't be grown out in the open like all the others, so I suspect should any such operation set up shop here it would resemble some sort of cross between a warehouse and a greenhouse, fortified, of course, by a state-ofthe-art security system.
I guess you could make the argument that such an operation wouldn't be all that different from a greenhouse footprint-wise, but the one obvious exception is there isn't a flourishing black market, at least that I know of, for bell peppers or grape tomatoes.
There's no denying the actual growing of the plant is an agricultural activity, but the end product is so much beyond the norm that it screams out for more, which was obviously the rationale behind Delta's efforts to regulate the industry.
Make no mistake, there are stringent regulations in place; it's just that preventing it from being grown on farmland isn't one of them.
