My husband and I are the founders of Circle of Dreams Farm. Speaking as a member of one of the “small family farms” mentioned in the Nov. 30 article (“Supes set limits on marijuana industry in new county ordinance”), this ordinance is going to have devastating consequences. We have been cultivating cannabis in San Luis Obispo County under Proposition 215 and Senate Bill 420 since the beginning of 2014, and we have always followed the city, county, and state regulations. When Paso Robles decided to vote on allowing delivery services, we immediately applied for our business license and were approved.
We maintained a discreet cultivation site on a 1-acre parcel in Paso Robles until January 2016 when the city voted to ban cultivation within its limits. We were forced to move our family and our farm out to the Carrizo Plain area where we thought we had finally found a place to operate our business peacefully. We purchased a home nestled on 5 acres of land and set up our cultivation site on less than one of those acres. The site is well concealed and securely fenced behind a 6-plus-foot screened fence with a locking gate, and well away from any property lines. We do not have neighbors on either side of us, and the one neighbor we do have behind us, we are in good standing with and they have issued no complaints regarding our farming activities.
Our farm utilizes closed-loop cultivation practices in which no waste is produced. Our cannabis is all organic and produced in an ethical manner. We have a well that we source all of our water from, and we have professionally installed sewage and electric. We immediately complied with the temporary ordinance in 2016 and were quickly approved to cultivate on our land. We meet all the impending state requirements regarding a cultivation license and have been patiently waiting for the state to begin accepting applications. However, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors’ decision is creating much uncertainty for farms such as ours.
This ordinance feels like a huge step backward and is going to force us to either uproot our family once again for the second time in two years, a move we likely cannot afford to make, or put us out of business completely, taking away the livelihood that supports our family. I have written to every board member expressing my concerns, a task I have undertaken many times over the past several months of deliberation, and I feel that my concerns are falling on deaf ears.
Our farm and many other farms operating in the unincorporated areas of the county do not pose the threats that the board is concerned about, nor have we received any complaints about our activity, or done any harm to the environment or fellow citizens. To pass a blanket ordinance such as this is a huge injustice. It is going to put many people out of work and cause a lot of suffering within the community for both business owners and the longtime patients that they serve. I ask that anyone who shares my dismay over this ordinance speak out and voice your opinion in the hopes that our local government may revisit this issue and deliberate with more effort to find a win-win solution for everyone involved. Δ
Nawal Kassir is eking out a living in the California Valley, but that could change. Send comments through the editor at clanham@newtimesslo.com or write a letter for publication and email it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Last-Minute Gift Guide 2017.
I’ve long supported marijuana for industrial, medicinal, and inspirational use. Your operation sounds like one I can support because it’s organic. However, while you may not be harming the environment, many others are. They use rodenticides and pesticides, overdraft the water table, and allow trash to blow around. I’ve seen it. These are the reasons I support the County’s position.
Dear New Times Editor and Nawal Kassir,
In response to the Dec. 7, 2017, opinion article “We Are Family Farmers”, may I point out several issues? Although I sympathize with their predicament and the many others in their position, the Kassirs did start their cannabis operation in a city and county with no directive ordinance. Other cities and counties in the State had already fully or partially banned cannabis activities. SLO County, on the other hand, was in a political war with itself, wasn’t paying attention to what was coming, and consequently was blindsided by a deluge of growers arriving from other counties and states seeking to reap the benefits of an unregulated county. Paso’s ban should have been a red flag as to what was coming for the Kassirs. Their move out to the Carrizo was paralleled by hundreds of others from all over the state and country. Sensitive habitat was destroyed, endangered and protected species were displaced or killed, the existing community in California Valley was completely disrupted, and the limited water basin was being abused. Hundreds of other growers spread throughout the county. In response, an Urgency Ordinance was enacted over a year ago that made it pretty clear that any grows could be eliminated by a coming Permanent Ordinance. It was also clear that due to various conditions, Residential Suburban zoning would be off limits to those grows. This has now happened. The Kassirs’ pleas to the County are not falling on deaf ears, but the County is also responding to the pleas by the majority of other residents who are tired of having their communities overrun by outsiders with noisy generators, bright night lights, water trucks, and insufficient enforcement to regulate this new industry. If “locals” are getting swept up in these new restrictions, I sympathize. But give it some time; the outsiders will move back to their origins, or on to other unregulated areas, and the “locals” won’t have the unwanted competition and can continue their “farming” activities in legally zoned areas. As far as cannabis patients; all of California can now grow, and there will be (and is) an abundance of medicine; just look at all the ads in the back pages of New Times, visit the many virtual dispensaries, or grow your own (up to six) plants – it’s not that hard.
Patrick McGibney
Carrizo Plain