Black farmers vie for Florida medical marijuana license – Orlando Sentinel

TALLAHASSEE — A 99-year-old matriarch who began her agricultural career in cotton fields in Northwest Florida. A rancher who served in Vietnam and grew up in an Alachua County community terrorized in the past by lynchings. A family that got its start picking apples on a New York farm.

They’re among people vying for a potentially lucrative medical-marijuana license earmarked for a Black farmer who participated in decades-old litigation over discrimination in lending practices by the federal government.

The Florida Department of Health has received a dozen applications for the license.

While details on many of the applications are heavily redacted, the information made available to the public reveals Black farmers and deep-pocketed financial backers attempting to establish a foothold in Florida’s medical-marijuana industry, where licenses regularly fetch upwards of $50 million.

Florida voters in 2016 passed a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. That led to a 2017 law establishing guidelines for the industry, including earmarking a license for a Black farmer because none of the African-American farmers in Florida could meet eligibility requirements for an earlier round of state licenses.

Charles Smith, another applicant, and his family achieved success in Florida’s agriculture industry after getting their start in the 1960s working on an apple farm in New York and harvesting vegetables in Virginia, according to his application.

After joining a co-op run by six Black farming families in 1979, the Smiths grew hundreds of acres of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.

The family later established a packing company, Manatee Growers Packing Co., which at its peak employed 300 packers, the application said.

Meanwhile, Roz McCarthy, CEO and founder of Minorities for Medical Marijuana, is one of numerous owners and investors identified in an application submitted by Moton Hopkins, who lives in Ocala.

McCarthy said she worked with state lawmakers as they were crafting the 2017 law.

McCarthy acknowledged that “there was some confusion” among applicants about the complicated licensing process. She said her nonprofit organization held boot camps for people interested in seeking the license.

“The task is daunting, to say the least, and that was really obvious in some of the responses, in my opinion,” she said. “It took us six years to get to this point to see that, wow, well I know what you’re trying to do, but this really looks like it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.”

Black farmers also were hit by sticker shock when the Department of Health’s application process included a non-refundable fee of $146,000, more than double what prospective operators paid the last time an application process was open.

One application portrayed the impediments Black farmers encountered as they tilled the soil, tended livestock and tried to eke out a living in the South.

Applicant Fred Fisher said his family’s roots in Jonesville, a Black agricultural community in Alachua County, date back to the days of slavery. He provided a family tree and photographs of headstones.

“In the 1800s my family suffered the abuses of slavery leaving a lasting reminder of the abuses handed down to us because of our race,” Fisher said in an affidavit submitted as part of follow-up correspondence with Ferguson, adding that “those who spoke out against the abuses were lynched.”