In addition to marijuana grows, Santa Barbara County residents can expect to see testing labs, manufacturing, distribution, and delivery businesses, and retail store fronts sprout over the coming years, but the operations will be limited by the licensing process that's being developed by the Board of Supervisors.
Of 12 state licensing categories, the county is focusing first on grower licenses, which include up to four subcategories based on the size of a grow, whether it’s indoors, outdoors or uses a mixed source of light.
Licenses also will carry an “M” designation for medical marijuana, or an “A” designation for adult-use marijuana.
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Grower licenses are broken down into categories ranging from Type 1 to Type 4. They include the “specialty” grower Type 1 license, with three subcategories for grows up to 5,000 square feet and one “cottage” license limited to 2,500 square feet; Type 2 licenses include small-size grows up to 10,000 square feet; and Type 3 licenses cover medium-size plantation-grows up to 1 acre outdoors and 22,000 square feet indoors or with mixed light.
A Type 4 license for nurseries will also allow operators to deliver live plants.
Those who intend to operate large plantation-like grows will have to wait until 2023 to obtain licenses.
The Department of Food and Agriculture will require unique identification numbers to be attached to the base of each plant at a cultivation site to allow the agency to track plants as they move through the process from grower to consumer.
Top image: Dima_Rogozhin | Adobe Stock
