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OAKLAND GREEN

The hard-luck city of Oakland, Calif., an aging port, rail and factory town, has decided to reinvent itself as an agricultural center in hopes of better times.

The City Council voted 5-2 this week to license four large facilities where marijuana could be grown and processed.  The hope is that the grass factories will create hundreds of jobs, pay millions of dollars in taxes and give Oakland a jump-start on rival cities if Californians vote this fall to legalize recreational marijuana.

The measure attracted heated opposition, but not from the people you might think, those who believe that city and state approval of the cultivation and sale of marijuana would lead to rampant drug use with its accompanying social problems.

No, the opposition was from small- and medium-size growers who currently serve the medical-marijuana market and who fear they would be forced out of business by the big operations.

And the four licenses to be approved are heavily weighted toward large, well-funded operations - an annual permit of $211,000; an 8 percent tax on gross sales and a requirement that the growers carry $2 million in liability insurance.  The Associated Press says one potential applicant plans a facility that would produce 21,000 pounds of pot a year; another aspirant, envisioning the "Silicon Valley of Cannabis," proposes 100,000 square feet of indoor growing space.

It was ever thus in agriculture, as Oakland will find: Giant agribiz crushing the small family farm.