According to Rick Byrd, the future of farming is tall, dirtless and local.

Byrd’s vision of skyscraper farms to feed city dwellers begins with a much different kind of crop: marijuana.

In a coming together that once seemed highly unlikely, California state regulators Wednesday greeted a hotel ballroom filled with marijuana growers, promising that a licensing program to bring thousands of pot producers out of the shadows will be operational in the state by Jan. 1, 2018.

It was hard to ignore the landmark nature of the informal meeting between California officials – including the head of the new marijuana regulations bureau – and members of the California Growers Association, a 2-year-old trade group representing marijuana farmers. 

Mayor hopes letter to Health Canada will breathe life back into Vida Cannabis's plan to open plant.

The Town of Stellarton, N.S., is urging Health Canada to quickly approve a proposed medical marijuana production facility in the community, an enterprise the mayor says would bring much-needed jobs to the area.

At a town council meeting this week, a motion was passed to write a letter to Health Canada in support of Vida Cannabis's plan to operate a pot plant at the old Clairtone building on Acadia Street.

"The intent of it was to expedite the process of making 114 Acadia St. as operations for a cannabis production facility," said Stellarton Mayor Danny MacGillivray.

With just one word — Erbachay — is raising a lot of eyebrows around Saskatchewan.

The ads, displayed in Regina and Saskatoon, show a green leaf with the word “Erbachay” and “Canada Wide Delivery.”

The company behind the signs are a Vancouver-based medical marijuana dispensary that sells and delivers weed.

“By putting these billboards up, we’re trying to help that process. Make it a little more normalized, make it more accessible,” Erbachay Health Centers president Darcy Delainey said.

Erbachay isn’t a licensed producer for cannabis with Health Canada but within Vancouver city limits, Delainey said he can sell medical marijuana.

The billboards are a way to educate the public and hopefully destigmatize weed, he said.

Israeli scientists began their pioneering research to isolate the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana with a 10-pound stash seized by the Tel Aviv police. That effort, in the 1960s, helped propel Israel to the vanguard of research into the plant's medicinal properties and lay the foundations for a medical marijuana industry.

Now the nation's burgeoning pot business, backed by an unlikely coalition of farmers, lawyers, scientists, entrepreneurs and the country's ultraorthodox health minister, is going mainstream – and eyeing markets abroad.

The increasing supply of legal marijuana is turning into a major buzz kill for growers as prices plunge — and an opportunity for companies that can help cut production costs.

Prices are tumbling as formerly illicit cultivators emerge from the shadows to invest millions of dollars in massive pot factories. In Colorado, the average price sought by wholesalers has fallen 48 per cent to about US$1,300 a pound since legal sales to all adults started in January 2014, according to Cannabase, operator of the state’s largest market. Supply is surging as growers expand and install the latest agricultural technology.

A new report estimates consumers spent $53.3 billion on cannabis in North America last year.

The first-of-its-kind analysis, compiled by ArcView Market Research, spans legal, medical and illegal marijuana markets across both the United States and Canada. At around $46 billion, the illegal market constituted 87 percent of marijuana sales in 2016 (a decrease from 90 percent in 2015), dwarfing both medical and legal sales.

The marijuana investment and research firm provided a 25-page executive summary of its fifth annual State of Legal Marijuana Markets to The Huffington Post Tuesday, ahead of the full report’s release in February.

It looks really close to becoming official.

All signs are pointing to marijuana being legalized in Canada sometime in 2017. Millions of Canadians who enjoy a puff or two every now and again are excited they?ll no longer have to hide their habits from their friends, professional colleagues, and especially law enforcement.

But the excitement of the average smoker doesn?t get close to the euphoria surrounding investing in the drug. There are thousands of investors convinced pot stocks are the next big thing.

How often do you come across urban, educated 20-somethings taking up farming as a full-time gig? Rarely, correct? Meet Chirag Tekchandaney, Jahan Peston Jamas, Sanvar Oberoi, Delzaad Deolaliwala Yash Kotak, Avnish Pandya and Sumit Shah, all friends from the same batch from the commerce stream of HR College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai, who took up agriculture to turn it into a ‘sexy’ and lucrative business opportunity.

The Bombay Hemp Company (Boheco), which came about in 2013, is India’s first industrial and medicinal hemp (cannabis) company. Located in Mumbai the company works with Union and State governments to assist farmers to improve their socio-economic standards by utilising cultivation of cannabis for industrial, construction, and pharmaceutical purposes.

Medicinal cannabis company Creso Pharma, which aims to launch two medicinal cannabis pet products by April, has been registered by the EU health authority.

An Australian pharmaceutical developer has received the European Union's first ever health registration to commercialise medical cannabis for pets.

ASX-listed Creso Pharma is now registered with the EU and is in the process of applying for a global import and export license as it aims to sell two cannabidiol-based pet products by April.

The products, which are essentially food additives for horses and dogs, are designed to help target behavioural disorders including anxiety and noise phobias as well as chronic pain, arthritis and diabetes.