Salt Spring’s controversial pot factory
Transplanted Torontonian sparks debate over industrial use of farmland on Gulf Island
Tyler Rumi enters the production facility for his company, Good Buds, on Salt Spring Island. A 16,000-square-foot warehouse surrounded by a barbed-wire fence has sparked debate about industrial use of farmland on the Gulf Island. Reporter Katie DeRosa visited Salt Spring to check it out.
Tyler Rumi looks across 24 acres of rolling farmland on the north end of Salt Spring Island. While some island residents see protected agricultural land where mature trees have been clearcut to make room for an industrial-style facility, Rumi sees a landscape being primed to grow B.C.’s next cash crop: cannabis.
Rumi’s company, Good Buds, did not enter this small community quietly. It rumbled in last year with dozens of transport trucks clogging the ferry system as they carried recycled shipping containers to the property at 1867 North End Rd., which the company purchased in April 2017 for $625,000. Then trees were felled and the property excavated to allow construction of a 16,000-square-foot warehouse surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.
But Rumi, an energetic 33-year-old dressed in skinny jeans and a sports jersey with Good Buds emblazoned on the back, is quick to quash perceptions that he’s a millennial from Toronto parachuting into this Gulf Island community with the sole purpose of cashing in on the green rush. He touts his long-standing family ties to Salt Spring through his uncle and grandparents, and said the company wants to partner with local craft cannabis growers to give them access to the legal market.
“Part of our core values is community and involvement with our community and we thought Salt Spring really embodied the same things that we did with sustainability and progressive identity,” said Rumi. “We want to keep the local growers involved, because we know that’s where some of the best product is produced. That’s exactly why we came here to work with and support those craft growers.”
Despite those assurances, many residents of Salt Spring — a community that has long taken a laissez-faire attitude to farmers growing pot in their back sheds — are wary of the disruption this large-scale producer could bring.
Trustees representing Salt Spring Island are fuming that Good Buds did not consult the Islands Trust or the surrounding community before embarking on the venture.
“The fact that the grow-op set up without the local trust being notified, there’s a gap in the regulatory process that removed our ability to control these mega-structures,” said George Grams, a Salt Spring Island trustee who said he’s been contacted by neighbours concerned about the project.
Local bylaws do not require cannabis companies to seek local input, Grams said, so when the concrete structure was erected last year, the Islands Trust had little power to stop it.
That was well before the Ministry of Agriculture introduced regulations in July that allow local governments and First Nations to ban concrete-based marijuana facilities on protected farmland.
The Salt Spring Island Farmers’ Institute in March released a statementwarning of the consequences of corporate marijuana companies setting up on farmland, including rising land costs and the drain on public infrastructure and resources.
Grams is frustrated to see land protected by the Agricultural Land Reserve used to grow cannabis, echoing a concern that’s reverberated across Vancouver Island ahead of legalization on Oct. 17.
“The more we sterilize good farmland for huge factories growing recreational drugs, the less able we are to promote food security,” Grams said.
Freya Skye, who lives on an acreage next to the cannabis operation, was distressed to see truckloads of trees and top soil carted away as warehouse construction ramped up in August 2017.
“They’ve destroyed this piece of land,” she said. “This is basically a factory farm for marijuana. Salt Spring is a small-scale organic farming community, so it’s really against everything the island stands for.”
Rumi acknowledges that the tree removal and construction upset his neighbours.
“I think like anything, when you have construction, it’s always hard for neighbours. Whether you’re in downtown Toronto or Salt Spring Island, no one likes a construction site, so we’re very sympathetic to that being a concern,” said Rumi.
As he spoke, an excavator dug a hole the size of an Olympic swimming pool. When work is complete, it will be a water catchment pond large enough to collect rainwater diverted from the roof of the warehouse. The goal is to address one of the biggest concerns, which is the amount of water the cannabis facility will draw from the local supply.
Good Buds employs nine full-time staff, including growers, scientists and quality-control personnel. Four of the employees are from Salt Spring Island and the company also employs local contractors, Rumi said.
Rumi would not disclose the company’s capital investment, but said the financial backing comes from about 50 family members and close friends. His father, Eric Rumi, is retired after a career in the pharmaceutical industry. “We’re a family company and you know when you talk to us that you’re getting that result.” He said he wants to build a company that his two-week-old son, Archer, can grow to be proud of.
At the Salt Spring Compassion Club, tucked in two rooms of an old white clapboard house, jars are filled with dried cannabis sourced from several small growers across the island. Len Swan, who runs the Compassion Club, said he’s concerned that as the industry transitions from the shadow market to the legal market, longtime craft cannabis growers will be left behind.
“Our club has been run strictly on local farmers and we’ve been doing nothing but supporting local farmers,” he said. “Salt Spring is a pot community. These people have been doing it in a spare room in their house or a back shed for decades.”
In a cruel bit of irony, the compassion club, which long pushed for an end to cannabis prohibition, will be shutting down next month. Swan refuses to sell the pre-packaged product supplied to retailers through the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch, which he said will be months old and inferior in quality to what he sells now.
“I shouldn’t have to go to some distribution centre in Vancouver to get cannabis that was grown around the corner from me,” he said. “There’s nothing but organic love and goodness put in the cannabis sold in my store. And you’re not going to find that in a warehouse.” B ack at the North End Road warehouse, Good Buds is growing about 180 plants in the “mother room,” a fluorescent-light-filled white box that can be entered only by staff who have showered and donned protective suits. The plants are purely a test batch for Health Canada, which in June approved the company’s licence to grow but has not yet given it a licence to sell.
The long-term plan, said Sam Mik, the company’s master grower, is to grow marijuana outdoors across 13 acres of soil, to be used for cannabis extract. She hopes to plant the first outdoor crop next summer.
Mik, who hails from the Emerald Triangle, a region in Northern California considered the epicentre of pot growing in the U.S., spent eight years growing organic cannabis there before moving to Salt Spring Island for the job six months ago.
Growing outside is more sustainable because it requires considerably less electricity, depending on natural light instead, said Mik, as a nearby excavator prepared drainage ditches to prevent waterlogging.
Through the company’s Buddy program, Mik and Rumi are setting up purchasing deals with small-scale cannabis growers across the Gulf Islands, Vancouver Island and one in the Fraser Valley. Once legalization takes effect, cannabis growers can apply to Health Canada for a micro-cultivation licence, which would allow them to grow cannabis and distribute it to large-scale cultivators who can process and sell the product.
“I think Good Buds’ presence on the island will promote craft growers here,” Mik said. “They’re going to need someone with a processing facility, processing licence and sales licence to enter the legal market.” B ron Hogan, who was born on Salt Spring Island in 1977 and raised there by a draft-dodger father and a free-spirit mother, is intimately aware of the pot-growing culture on Salt Spring Island.
As a child, he recalls his friends’ parents growing pot in the back garden and at 15, he started growing in a small cutblock just off his parents’ property. Now a 41-year-old Vancouver-based businessman, Hogan and a group of investors are launching a company called B.C. Craft Supply, which will purchase product solely from small-batch growers, process it and sell it to the province’s Liquor Distribution Branch.
As a Salt Spring native, Hogan can understand the community’s skepticism of a large producer such as Good Buds, but he appreciates the company’s efforts to connect with local cannabis growers.
“I feel because of my connection with craft cannabis producers, the licensedproducer market has primarily tried to leave the people who originated this industry on the outside while they want to come in and reap all the rewards.”
The Health Canada micro-cultivation licence “gives mico-producers a chance to compete with large-scale growers,” Hogan said. “I’m rooting for the underdogs.”