One man's farm is another man's nuisance.
Cannabis produces gray areas and loopholes the public will need to sort out.
Readers responded to recent posts with these comments:
1. Farm rules protect the right to farm, but farms can use the rules about solid waste in an abusive way, and businesses with solid waste to dispose of can use a local farm and farm rules to try to get rid of their waste products on the cheap.
2. Certain kinds of cannabis production and processing may not genuinely be "agriculture," as it is commonly understood, and should be in industrial zones.
Actions that are perfectly normal and reasonable in a large agricultural lot in an Exclusive Farm Use Zone, e.g. having a big pile of manure or cull melons or corn stalks in preparation for tiling under at end of season, make sense on a farm. Technically it would be accumulating solid waste, but realistically there is no other way for a farm to operate. You cannot have corn without stalks, nor cattle without manure. However, piling up big quantities of those same things in a commercial or residential zone would be abusive. It would be a junk pile, not a customary farm operation. So there are rules, to distinguish between reasonable and not.
A reader wrote saying that this blog erred in how It framed the dispute. This blogs frame had been that it was a kind of balancing act between the rights of farmer and neighbor.He wrote the case "is about neighbors' rights when someone operates an illegal garbage dump, with the goal of making money, under a farming facade. It is also about when companies that are obligated to dispose of their waste properly avail themselves of an illegal disposal site, saving thousands of dollars and then attempt to disclaim all responsibility by blaming the middle man [the trucking company that hauled the waste.]"
A marijuana factory is not a farm. Or maybe it is, legally. But should it be?
Some of the comments this blog on social media make the point that marijuana greenhouses are being set up all around southern Oregon. Some have concrete floors, LED lights, hepa-filters for the air, humidifiers and de-humidifiers, plants are grown in boxes in purchased "soil," and the product produced is marketed as greenhouse factory perfect.
Its is grown in Southern Oregon because we have the knowledge and human talent here: people who know how to grow it. The cannabis factory could have been anywhere. Factory greenhouses seems less like "agriculture" and more like manufacturing plant for CBD and THC, not really different from a factory that makes aspirin or any other drug.
Zoning laws wouldn't allow a Pfizer to put a drug manufacturing plant on EFU land.
The 24-hour lights, traffic, and structures would have the normal impacts of an industrial facility, and it would irrevocably change the pattern of land use. It would create industrial nuisances incompatible with agriculture. Yet somehow, since these greenhouse factories are defined as "agriculture," they are placed in agricultural zones.
Some of the comments this blog on social media make the point that marijuana greenhouses are being set up all around southern Oregon. Some have concrete floors, LED lights, hepa-filters for the air, humidifiers and de-humidifiers, plants are grown in boxes in purchased "soil," and the product produced is marketed as greenhouse factory perfect.
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| Cannabis factory farm, west of Medford. |
Its is grown in Southern Oregon because we have the knowledge and human talent here: people who know how to grow it. The cannabis factory could have been anywhere. Factory greenhouses seems less like "agriculture" and more like manufacturing plant for CBD and THC, not really different from a factory that makes aspirin or any other drug.
Zoning laws wouldn't allow a Pfizer to put a drug manufacturing plant on EFU land.
The 24-hour lights, traffic, and structures would have the normal impacts of an industrial facility, and it would irrevocably change the pattern of land use. It would create industrial nuisances incompatible with agriculture. Yet somehow, since these greenhouse factories are defined as "agriculture," they are placed in agricultural zones.
If Pfizer's aspirin plant gave off a persistent smell, it would either be regulated as industrial pollution, or in any case isolated to an industrial zone, along with lumber mills and the like where industrial smells are to be expected. The aspirin manufacturing plant would not have the advantage of using the farm privilege of "customary" odors, noise, dust etc. to create a nuisance for nearby farmer neighbors, but claim that they are really "agriculture," and people should have to live with it.
Cannibus factories get the farm privilege; aspirin factories would not.
Cannibus factories get the farm privilege; aspirin factories would not.
One of the key elements of Jackson County's land use plan protection for agricultural land is the preservation of the general farm neighborhood, in which neighbors inevitably cooperate regarding irrigation districts, pesticide use, etc. Farms are a compatible neighbor for farms. Industrial factories are not. The 1982 ordinance which established farm zones reads: "In establishing this [EFU] district it is the expressed intent of the Board of County Commissioners to prevent obstructive, damaging, or nuisance uses or activities which are not compatible with agriculture. . . . Expansion of urban development into rural areas is a matter of public concern because of the unnecessary increases in costs of community services, conflicts between farm and urban activities. . . . Click: Page 124, on EFU Zone
Jackson County has a zoning conflict problem. Some cannabis production looks and feels like agriculture, i.e. the open fields of hemp grown near Oak Grove School. But some of it looks and acts like a factory, and but is using agricultural rules.
This may be a misfit. The county is putting drug factories in farm zones.
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