Pot odours normal practice?

RE: LINCOLN COUNCIL TACKLING CANNABIS GREENHOUSE ODOUR ISSUES, JAN. 8

I read with interest the article about cannabis odour by Luke Edwards.

One important word was left out of this sentence: “So in an attempt to address the odour concerns of those facilities, councillors have also asked staff to work with other agencies, such as the Ontario Ministry of Food and Rural Affairs ...”

The full acronym for the ministry is OMAFRA, and that first A stands for agriculture and that rhymes (or not) with farms and stands for farmers.

If any of the folks responsible for those smells are operating on property that is zoned agricultural and they are selling at least $7,000 worth of crop per year (hard not to with that type of crop, I’d think), then growers are officially farmers and they are protected by the Farming and Food Production Protection Act of Ontario. And in turn that means they are allowed to create as much “noise, odour, vibration, light, flies, smoke and dust” as is generated by any “normal farm practice.”

And the worst part is, “No municipal bylaw applies to restrict a normal farm practice carried on as a part of an agricultural operation.”

What is a normal farm practice? Basically it’s almost any activity performed by two or more farmers who have decided to do anything that generates the aforementioned nuisances in pursuit of generating a profit from their farming operation. Who decides what a normal farm practice is? That’s the role of the Normal Farm Practices Review Board. And that’s a group of farmers. I do wish the non-farmers luck. I and many others are involved in a similar fight to get grape growers to turn off bird cannons that also disturb nonfarmers. But that’s another story.

Michael Scott

St. Catharines