Emerald Health Therapeutics this week announced it has received from Health Canada its cultivation license amendment and has full municipal permitting for its first of two 78,000-square-foot greenhouses at its newest organic grow facility in Richmond.

Emerald says it can now begin commercial greenhouse production at the site and planting will begin immediately, with first harvest expected by January 2020.

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An initial amendment, received in July 2019, added 12 acres of outdoor cultivation area.

Emerald says it capitalized on the outdoor growing season with one growing cycle for research and development purposes, as well as to enhance planning for the full 2020 outdoor growing season. All indoor and outdoor operations to-date have been focused on facilitating organic certification.

“With planting starting now, the Metro Vancouver organic operation is well positioned to be a significant contributor to Emerald's financial results in 2020,” said Emerald CEO Riaz Bandali in a news release.

The Richmond site encompasses 156,000 square feet in two greenhouses as well as 12 acres (roughly 500,000 square feet) of licensed outdoor cultivation area. The first outdoor cannabis crop was harvested recently. The company has also stated there’s potential to expand the outdoor growing area to 24 acres.

The City of Richmond tried to block Emerald from establishing an outdoor cannabis grow operation on farmland but last year the B.C. Supreme Court ruled the city’s zoning bylaw was inconsistent with provincial Agricultural Land Reserve rules, and that the city could not prohibit a farm use that ALR regulations specifically allow.

Emerald also has a joint venture with Village Farms, called Pure Sunfarms, to grow cannabis at huge Village Farms in East Ladner. Once fully operational it will encompass 2.2 million square feet.

While several Delta greenhouses have made the switch to cannabis, there’s been, so far, no applications to convert outdoor growing areas to growing marijuana.

Last year the province announced that local and First Nations governments would be able to prohibit cannabis production in the ALR within their communities, but only if cannabis is grown in ways that doesn’t preserve the productive capacity of agricultural land.