Casey O’Neill: On local food system development

The following is an opinion column from our occasional columnist Casey O’Neill of HappyDay Farms north of Laytonville.

As a food and cannabis producer in Mendocino County, it has been an amazing but difficult journey these past few years as regulations have begun to bring cannabis out of prohibition. HappyDay Farms has partnered with Flow Kana since 2014, when the company was first being formed. Those initial brainstorming sessions about cannabis normalization, small farms, diversified crop portfolios, and market access seem like a lifetime ago. We have been thrilled to see how the company has grown, providing legal sales opportunities to a growing number of independent farms, as we all work to navigate the complexities of the newly regulated market alongside the farmers. Any farmer knows that getting product to market is half the battle, and we are grateful for the opportunity to see our cannabis arrive on dispensary shelves throughout the state of California.