Grow ops on the ALR?
Trevor Nichols - Nov 27, 2017 - Biz Releases

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A pile of pot producers have looked into growing marijuana on the Agricultural Land Reserve in Kelowna, but so far none have set up shop on the city’s officially designated farmland.

Ryan Smith, Kelowna’s community planning manager, says the city gets “pretty frequent” request about growing pot on the ALR, with someone making an inquiry every week or two.

Despite the keen interest, Smith says we’re unlikely to see fields of pot take over the farmland surrounding the city–even though producers have every right to plant them.

In 2015, the provincial government made it legal for medical marijuana producers to grow on the ALR. However, Smith says it’s “quite difficult” for them to set up an operation, because of several significant restrictions.

Municipalities aren’t allowed to outright ban medical pot production on the ALR, but they can regulate the operations.

According to Smith, any pot grown on the ALR essentially has to be grown inside an enclosed structure, and the municipality has several rules outlining what those structures have to look like.

There are also rules surrounding how far away the structure has to be from waterways, parks, and schools.

The security requirements for medical grow-ops on the ALR are also pretty tight, and the energy requirements are so high that most would have to bring in new electrical infrastructure.

It’s a lot of hoops to jump through, and Smith says the city isn’t aware of anyone who has made it through them all.

“Any of the inquiries we have taken have sort of died on the floor with those things,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean Smith still isn’t concerned.

“From a planning standpoint, I think there’s a definite land-use conflict between growing large-scale marijuana in greenhouses, with the types of agriculture I think the community would like to see on our ALR land,” he says.

“From a planning perspective, we are very concerned with that.”

Smith argues the kind of agriculture “the community would like to see” is “bonafide agriculture,” while marijuana is “a much different product,” driven by very different economics.

On top of his concerns is the looming legalization of pot, which will happen next year, and is poised to create a massive marijuana industry across the country. Until the legalization rules are set in stone, Smith can’t weigh in on what it might mean for the ALR.

“We don’t know how non-medical facilities would be regulated… so we (the city) won’t even comment on that yet,” he says.

Right now, there are several medical marijuana producers operating on industrial land in Kelowna, and Smith says that’s “probably where they should be.”

He says there is the potential that some marijuana producers will set up ALR operations in certain areas, but that most will likely stay in industrial spaces.


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