OAKLAND GREEN

The hard-luck city of Oakland, Calif., an aging port, rail and factory
town, has decided to reinvent itself as an agricultural center in
hopes of better times.

The City Council voted 5-2 this week to license four large facilities
where marijuana could be grown and processed. The hope is that the
grass factories will create hundreds of jobs, pay millions of dollars
in taxes and give Oakland a jump-start on rival cities if Californians
vote this fall to legalize recreational marijuana.

The measure attracted heated opposition, but not from the people you
might think, those who believe that city and state approval of the
cultivation and sale of marijuana would lead to rampant drug use with
its accompanying social problems.

No, the opposition was from small- and medium-size growers who
currently serve the medical-marijuana market and who fear they would
be forced out of business by the big operations.

And the four licenses to be approved are heavily weighted toward
large, well-funded operations - an annual permit of $211,000; an 8
percent tax on gross sales and a requirement that the growers carry $2
million in liability insurance. The Associated Press says one
potential applicant plans a facility that would produce 21,000 pounds
of pot a year; another aspirant, envisioning the "Silicon Valley of
Cannabis," proposes 100,000 square feet of indoor growing space.

It was ever thus in agriculture, as Oakland will find: Giant agribiz
crushing the small family farm.