New funding is headed to help small cannabis farmers in California’s famed Emerald Triangle improve and protect the area’s watersheds and environment while helping farmers move from provisional to annual licenses.
Environmental nonprofit Cannabis for Conservation announced in March that it secured $2.5 million in grants through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program through the Qualified Cultivator Funding Opportunity.
The two grants, Implementing Drought Resilience Strategies on Humboldt County Cannabis Farms and Provisional to Annual License Transitions for Trinity County Cultivators, will collectively assist 89 farms with environmental work across eight priority watersheds.
“We see a great opportunity for conservation with this nascent industry, especially given that many farmers own large tracts of land in one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on the planet,” Jackee Riccio, the co-founder and executive director of CFC, said in a press release.
The CFC’s mission is to conserve natural resources, restore degraded ecosystems and educate cannabis communities to prevent further ecological harm from unsustainable cultivation.
The Drought Resilience Program aims to directly improve sustainable water consumption on 17 farms through installing rainwater catchment systems, increasing water storage capacity and/or hardening and improving irrigation. The changes are designed to improve on-farm drought resilience and reduce direct impacts to water sources during low-flow periods.
None of the water improvements are intended to increase cultivation footprints, farm size or number of licenses, but rather reduce or eliminate extraction from water resources during dry periods and in some cases, convert farms to 100% water storage.
In Trinity County, the Provisional to Annual License Program will assist 72 cultivators in receiving an annual county and state license. The grant provides professional help to small farmers to finalize annual licenses, including completing documentation for California Environmental Quality Act compliance and Special-Status Species Mitigation and allow for a Technical Advisory Committee between California Department of Fish and Wildlife, CFC and Trinity County to quickly resolve licensing obstacles that arise.
CFC’s applied conservation approach prioritizes collaborative, on-farm research, biodiversity enhancements and environmental education. In bringing together scientists and farmers to implement peer-reviewed conservation practices, benefits are provided to wildlife, land and water, according to the release.
“Working with farmers and transforming monocultures into functional agroecosystems is a priority strategy among conservationists globally and we’re doing our part in that here, in the heart of cannabis country to return to the back-to-the-land values that this industry was born from,” Riccio said.
— Brian Beckley