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Notes from the Road:

What Farmers Need to Know about Local Zoning for Cannabis Cultivation
(Brought to you by Farm Bug Co-op)

The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission has finalized the state regulations for the adult
use cannabis industry. That is some exciting shit! We’re making history. But, don’t count all your chips
just yet, farmers. Marijuana cultivation is NOT CONSIDERED AGRICULTURE. That means that this plant
does not fall under your right to farm. It’s cool—we’ll get that changed eventually. In the meantime, what
that means is that you have some advocating to do if you want to get into the commercial cannabis
industry. Farm Bug is here to help. This is what we do. We advocate for Massachusetts farmers. So, here
we go. Let’s break this down:

• To reintegrate: marijuana is not considered agriculture and IS NOT PROTECTED UNDER

YOUR RIGHT TO FARM.

• What that means is that, if you want to join the commercial cannabis industry, you need to
be zoned by your local municipality to receive a license to cultivate cannabis.

• So, how do you make sure that you are zoned for cultivation?

• Here’s the deal: every town is different. But, the decision for zoning usually sits with a local
Planning Board or Land Use Committee. What you need to do is find out what person or
persons make the decisions on local zoning. Then, make your way up to the top dog. This
should not take long—just keep asking questions. These are elected officials and it is their
job to serve you. Once you know who this person is, give him/her a call and ask how he/she
intends to zone cannabis cultivation.

• There are several different scenarios that you could encounter, and they will sound
something like the following:

1. Ban: A ban on adult use cannabis establishments is the worst-case scenario. A ban can
be done in two ways.
I. If your municipality did not vote in favor of recreational (adult use) cannabis
(in other words, they voted under 50% Yes on Question 4), then your local
elected officials can decide to instate a ban without getting any input from their
constituents.
II. If your municipality did vote in favor of recreational (adult use) cannabis, then
your community can still ban cannabis establishments, but they would need to
bring it to a town-wide or city-wide vote. Many bans have already been

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instated across Massachusetts in small special elections that generally have low
voter turnout.

What happens if your city or town has put a ban in place? If your
municipality has banned adult use cannabis cultivation, then you cannot grow
cannabis for the commercial market until that ban ends (all bans will have a
specific end date). Your only option here is to go to another municipality or
begin advocacy work to ensure that, when the ban ends, you are zoned for
cultivation. It’s never too early to start the advocacy process. Believe it or not,
friends, we still live in a democracy and advocacy still works. Just keep the faith
and work hard. We are here to help.

2. Moratorium: Many communities, even those that voted overwhelmingly in favor of

Question 4, have chosen to instate a moratorium on adult use cannabis
establishments. Moratoria are put in place by locally elected officials (or a city or town
vote), but they can be lifted at any point. A moratorium can only last for a certain
period and the city or town must come up with a plan for zoning during that period.
There have been cases of towns requesting extensions on a moratorium, but there is a
question as to whether the Attorney’s General Office will actually accept these
requests for extensions. A moratorium is not the end of the world, but it could slow
progress. Your best bet with a moratorium in place is to use this time period to
understand who the players are in your city or town and how best to influence the
process such that it favors your farm and your community. Cannabis is going to be a
billion-dollar industry in the state of Massachusetts regardless of what any of us say or
do. So, it’s a question of what you want that billion-dollar industry to look like. Do you
want it to look like a bunch of Walmart’s or Monsanto’s or Coca-Cola’s or, instead, do
you want it to look like local farmers growing cannabis and employing our local
people? Use this moratorium to your advantage to get the residents in your town on
your side to favor the programs that you favor and to push elected officials to
implement those programs. Make cannabis right for your community and make sure it
is zoned so that farmers can access the industry. Dig in and good luck. Lift that
moratorium and get our farmers zoned!

3. No Decision has Been Made: If no decision has been made about how to zone for
cannabis cultivation, time is of an essence because it is likely that, once a decision is
made, it will be a lot harder to change that decision after the fact rather than influence
it before it happens. In this scenario, you can use the above approach for a
moratorium, but, at a more rapid pace. A moratorium tends to give you time to design

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strategy. If a decision is about to be made, you need to get a strategy in place and
organize supporters ASAP.

4. A Decision has Been Made: If a decision has been made but the zoning ordinance
and/or bylaws are not in your favor as far as where cultivation has been approved and
where you want to cultivate, this will be a longer process. But, don’t worry, just dig in!
Here, again, you need allies as soon as possible because it is much harder to change a
decision that has already been made than it is to influence a decision that has not been
made. If the decision that was made does not favor you and you believe it won’t favor
your community, you should use the media immediately. The more this decision
(which you believe to be a bad decision) is made public, the more pressure that the
local government will feel to make a change. The media will allow you to get your
story to a wider like-minded audience. Soon, people will come out of the woodwork to
support you. What that means is that you are gaining political power (perhaps even
more power than locally elected officials if their decision was out of touch with their
constituency). If that’s the case, your job is to pound the pavement and make the
debate as public and as transparent as you can. Transparency favors the underdog and
favors democracy over corporate corruption and greed. Your advocacy can have a
snowball effect on your community. Fight hard and good luck! Get in touch with Farm
Bug should you have any questions along the way.

• So, how do I change a zoning decision? What you need to do is gain an understanding of the
review process that must to take place to change the zoning ordinance such that your farm
(or farmland in general) is zoned for cultivation. Anytime zoning is changed, it will require
that the public is notified and, also, that there be a public hearing held (if not several). There
will be a lot of local politics involved in this. There is no avoiding that. You also have an option
to bring forward a citizen’s petition to propose new zoning. This petition will need a certain
number of local signatures (from registered voters) to be considered and you will likely need
a 2/3 majority vote in a town meeting to pass the petition. Whatever the case, start your PR
effort immediately. You need the residents and the media on your side as soon as possible. A
little guerilla marketing goes a long way. Do some old school door knocking. Pass out fliers
with educational information. Call local radio stations. Talk to local journalists. Farm Bug can
send along strategic advice for anyone who is working to ensure that farmers are zoned for
cannabis cultivation. Just make us aware of a what’s happening in your community.

• How can I best influence the process if no zoning decisions have been made? If no
zoning decisions have been made, this is your opportunity to advocate for and, eventually,
write the zoning bylaws such that farmland in your community is zoned for cannabis

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cultivation. Not a lawyer, you say? That doesn’t matter. Most cities and towns across
Massachusetts know nothing about the adult use cannabis law or the 88 pages of state
regulations. What that means is that you are now your own lawyer. This is your opportunity
to educate local officials on an issue that you know more about than them. With knowledge
comes power. Use it to your advantage.

• Zoning for cannabis cultivation will depend upon the city or town. But, generally, farmlands
are relatively remote and there aren’t many reasons why they shouldn’t be zoned for
cultivation (outside of a nervous neighbor or two).

• You will run into nervous neighbors for sure. This is inevitable. To any nervousness, your
response is something like the following: “Cannabis provides a great opportunity for my farm
and for local agriculture. I believe this to be a good opportunity for our community. It is in
Massachusetts state law that our town can collect up to 3% of revenue from any cannabis
business as part of a what is known as a community impact fee. That means money will go
directly to our town that it didn’t have before. I think that’s a good thing.”

• If you’d like to learn more about the community impact fee as a way to convince local officials
of the revenue benefits of a cannabis cultivation operation, please refer to Chapter 94 G
(REGULATION OF THE USE AND DISTRIBUTION OF MARIJUANA NOT MEDICALLY PRESCRIBED);
Section 3 (the language appears in subsection (d)).

• During your advocacy, you may run into an old man in town that is pissed off about
everything and doesn’t like loud noises. He also attends all of the town meetings because he is
pissed off about everything and has nothing better to do. You have essentially 2 choices with
someone like this.

1. Choice #1: Maybe buy him a coffee or a cookie at the local bakery and see if he feels
the same way that you do about ensuring that the cannabis industry benefits small
farmers and agricultural communities. You’d be surprised—maybe this person is
really pissed off about everything because he hates the way that his town has changed
over the years and doesn’t like all of these chain supermarkets and superstores. Soon,
he starts to understand your thoughts about making cannabis into a cottage
industry—one that is responsible to local communities. Maybe you’ve gained an ally
that you didn’t even think that you had.

2. Choice #2: Use your intuition very early to decipher if this crotchety old fart is a lost
cause. If you have engaged with him and you find your conversation is going around in
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circles, then he is likely a lost cause. He probably thinks cannabis is the devil’s lettuce
and that’s just the end of. You must disengage immediately and not waste any more of
your time.

• It is important for you to identify early in your advocacy the following: who are your allies,
who can be swayed, and who are the lost causes.

• Here is how to deal with those 3 categories:

1. Allies: Your allies do not have to be persuaded. They already agree with you. But, they
may not be actively or openly supporting you around town. It is your job to get your
allies active for your cause. You do not have to win over their vote. What you do have
to do is make sure that they are openly supporting you both with the local government
and in discussions with other residents. These are your influencers. So, make damn
sure that they are influencing.

2. Swingers: The category of “swingers” are those people that are on the fence but can
be persuaded to your side. Swingers can take many shapes. Your job is to find the focal
point from which they swing from. This is their wedge issue. Maybe your swinger is
someone that worries about addiction because he/she has had a relative die of an
opioid overdose. They have a bad perception of cannabis as a “gateway drug,” but
they’ve also been hearing that cannabis can be used as an alternative to opioids. That’s
your focal point from which this swinger swings. This swinger can now be influenced
with real life examples—be it a well-written article on this topic or a story from
someone they trust. So, maybe a mutual friend can tell this swinger how he/she used
cannabis as a way to get off of opioids. Or, maybe you encounter a swinger that wants
more tax money for the town, but he/she doesn’t want a cultivation facility anywhere
near his/her property. Here, there is a different approach. Why does this person feel
this way? Likely this swinger is imagining a structural monstrosity that is totally not
what you’re planning to build. You’re planning on cultivating some farm-grown
cannabis likely in a greenhouse to control the environment. This will not be as large as
they are thinking and will not take as much man power (or traffic) to maintain as they
are envisioning. It simply does not take an army of people to look after plants when
they are grown right. A living soil when sourced and made well does a lot of the work
for you. Also, does this person have an understanding of the nature of “big pot” and
how 99% of cannabis farmers across California have been cut out of the commercial
industry and are still selling illicitly across the country because they have not been
given a pathway to the legal market? Does this person want the same thing to happen

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in Massachusetts? Shouldn’t the cannabis industry benefit the small farmer such that
all of the revenue from the industry stays local in small communities instead of with
large corporate conglomerates that will industrialize cannabis in the same way that
our food supply was industrialized? Maybe all of this hippy dippy, anti-corporate talk
is getting somewhere with this swinger and you’ve just found yourself a new friend in
town (and found the focal point from which he/she swings).

3. Lost Causes: Your job with lost causes is to identify that person early and don’t waste
any more time trying to convince him/her. All this person will do is slow you down.
This person has his or her mind made up. He/she is happy with the status quo and
uncomfortable with change and it’s just not worth it to try to persuade him/her.

• Identify what category each person falls under early in your conversation. Then, implement
one of the above strategies.

• Good so far? Right—we know this a lot. Eventually, Farm Bug will have all this information in
a much more streamlined form. But, for now, isn’t this fun?

• So, what’s next? How about this? Here is a potpourri of questions that you may get from
either residents or members of your planning board as well as a general response to each
one:

Question: I’ve heard something about the smell of cannabis. Is your cultivation facility
going to smell?
Answer: We will be using an H-VAC system with a carbon filter, which neutralizes any
smell. There will be no smell emitted.

Question: What will you do with the hazardous waste material?

Answer: I am growing plants. So, there is no hazardous waste material. Cannabis is a
seasonal plant. Everything that’s not used to be sold will be composted and
regenerated into the soil.

Question: What about security?

Answer: Security is all covered in the 88 pages of state regulations. The security
requirements are pretty stringent. Fencing is required. Security cameras are also
required.

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Question: What about that fencing? Is it like barbed wire or something like that? I
don’t want an eye soar.
Answer: The great thing is that the Cannabis Control Commission allows communities
to request any reduction in security that they deem to be reasonable. If the town is
comfortable with any adjustment in the security requirements, then a request can be
sent to the Commission for approval. This request must also be sent to our local
sheriff. Therefore, if the town agrees that a certain state requirement is overboard,
that can be changed at the state-level by the Commission through this review process.

Question: I’m worried about traffic. What are we talking about as far as traffic?
Answer: This will be a cannabis cultivation facility. There will be no retail sales at my
location. So, the traffic will be minimal.

Question: What about light pollution? We live in a small town and I don’t want grow
lights on at all hours of the night.
Answer: We will be growing in a greenhouse, which means we will be using the sun
and light deprivation techniques. Any supplemental light that will be used will be
minimal and there are ways to ensure that supplemental lights are not emitted from
the greenhouse by using blackout technology.

(If you are doing a seasonal grow fully outdoors, the issue of light pollution at night
won’t matter).

OKAY! Take a deep breath! I think we’re done here. You’re not done, of course. You need to get to work
and get out there to advocate! But, don’t worry. It will be fun. Also, Farm Bug Co-op is here to help. We
love this stuff. We want to ensure that every single farmer in the state of Massachusetts that wants to
grow cannabis for the commercial market, can grow cannabis for the commercial market. So, let’s do this
together! There is no ganja like farm-grown ganja!

[Brought to you by The People of Farm Bug Co-op©]

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