New Rules in the Works for Hemp Growers
Santa Barbara County Supervisors Favor a 180-Acre Cap
Not wanting to promote a crop that looks like cannabis, smells like cannabis, is hard to police, and doesn’t bring in any tax revenue, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors this week proposed a 180-acre cap on hemp cultivation in unincorporated areas — effectively, what’s in the ground now.
The cap is part of a hemp ordinance now under board review, the first ever for the county. In addition to capping the acreage, the ordinance would ban cannabis from hemp fields and allow the county Agricultural Commissioner’s office and Sheriff’s Office to conduct unannounced inspections and take samples at harvest time. The concentration of psychoactive THC in the hemp plants must not exceed 0.3 percent.
Hemp growers would be required to own the land where they plant the crop. They would have to apply annually for a county business license and register with the state. And they would pay a yearly bond of $2,800 per acre to the county to cover the cost of destroying their crop, should they break the rules for legal harvests.
