No All Weed Farms

Image borrowed from flickr

I wrote in another post that “the legal marijuana industry has the potential to directly benefit healthy, local food systems.”

However, we must be careful that the marijuana industry does not create unmitigated incentives for farmers to go to all-weed-monoculture farms. The point is to nourish the food system, not to replace it. Some beginning suggestions on how to accomplish this:

• The Massachusetts regulations (935 CMR 500.000: Adult Use of Marijuana) limit marijuana cultivation canopy per licensee to 100,000 square feet, which is roughly 2.3 acres. This is good, keep it this way. This promotes a decentralized cultivation of independent farmers rather than a single monolith growing thousands of acres of monoculture cannabis crops. This is an important limitation. Also, this limits each individual farmer’s ability to turn an entire farm into all cannabis.
• Massachusetts has various financial and tax incentives to keep farmers growing agricultural crops, including Agricultural Preservation Restrictions and tax incentives under Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 61A. It may sound counter-intuitive, but by keeping cannabis off of the list of crops that qualify for 61A treatment, it allows a farmer to remove only the portion of land that will be used to grow marijuana, and keep the rest of the land in 61A. This is a strong incentive for farmers to keep the remaining land under agriculture crop production or else see a significant jump in property taxes. For example, a 60 acre farm in Pittsfield, MA would jump from a tax liability of approximately $800 per year to $10,000 per year if it loses 61A tax treatment because the farmer decides not to grow crops anymore.
• Embrace third-party certifications, like The Cannabis Conservancy, as a means to incentivize good farming practices. Third-party certification in agriculture is a tradition that for decades has communicated value, quality, and ethical standards to the consumer. This value is captured in price premiums to the grower. Part of these standards include the use of practices that encourage biodiversity and soil health, like diversified crops, crop rotations, companion planting, and plants that attract beneficial insects.
• Embrace farm culture. Many farmers raise animals, grow food, and steward the land out of love. It is difficult to overstate the value of having these incredible people, their animals, and their land integrated into the community. Create relationships and cultivate them with the long-view.