Easter Joy

to be created in Pemberton, he explained, are “plant touching jobs” or ones that “require people with cultivation and agriculture experience.” Of the 70 positions expected to be created, he maintained that Eastern Tiger has an expectation that at least 50 of them will be filled by Pemberton Township or nearby Pemberton Borough residents.

McWilliams, currently executive vice president at TerrAscend, another cannabis firm where he is responsible for 700 employees and $250 million in annual revenue across three cultivation and manufacturing facilities and nine retail locations, noted that in that position he has needed to provide for “months and months of training” to workers for them to gain “experience of local AG techniques,” but that he “finds a real advantage here working with the Pemberton community,” or one that already has many farmers and other AG talent.

Providing for a “community rooted in agriculture” is “one thing I feel strongly about,” McWilliams declared, further asserting he has seen in Burlington County “how many AG jobs have been taken away over the years because it is just not a viable industry where profit margins are wide enough to make enough money to sell just evergreens or just tomatoes.”

“You’ve got people with such deep experience in this industry and nowhere to use it,” he maintained. “And I think that the business we are creating is able to tap into a local resource of people who we are looking to pay competitive wages to, along with generous benefits, including health, dental and a 401(k)-matching system. Hopefully, we will reignite that spark in this agricultural pride that I know this county used to have. And I think we lost a bit of that.”

DiCapite, who told of how he has been involved in regulatory affairs and rulemaking in regard to cannabis and related packaging initiatives in various states, and who explained at one point that the 17-acre Pemberton tract would also not only see a harvesting of the some of the planted evergreen trees at Christmas time to “giveback” to the community, but also feature a pond with a “bunch of wildflowers,” and that the administrative team members will see “if we can plant tomatoes for instance” and is “looking to potentially generate honey with some bees,” in pointing to the company’s 30,000 square warehouse in Irvington “where we were actually approved,” called it “just not an environmentally-friendly operation.”

Rather, he said, it is “packed in,” and that is “why we are looking to do an open farm” or, as he put it, “something that is a little more natural and environmentally friendly.”

“We like the soil,” he further declared. “It is a nice clean plot of land, and on it currently is soybeans.”

But upon hearing that, township farmer Kodi Doyle, whose family has “farmed 60 plus years in Pemberton,” retorted, “to me this looks like ‘fake farming.’”

And while DiCapite had mentioned his liking of the local soil at one point, after Ward’s questioning of DiCapite and McWilliams got them to say that the cannabis would be “mostly” grown in “elevated pots and trays,” the councilman was told pointblank “no” when he inquired as to whether Eastern Tiger would be “using the soil whatsoever.”

“You guys said you came here because of our soil,” Doyle said. “But to me, if you are growing in pots in a warehouse (barn), you are not using our soil, unless you are digging holes out in the back and bringing it inside.”

Doyle also put the question to DiCapite and McWilliams, “Why come to this town?”, declaring, “There is no way you can guarantee me, or anyone else here, that you are going to hire 50 plus people from this town.”

“The people who live in this town, who are farmers, farm on their own property,” Doyle asserted. “They are not going to come and grow ‘marijuana’ in your warehouse!”