VERNON, N.Y – September 29, 2026 – [KOREWIRE]
On September 22, 2025, inspectors from the New York State Office of Cannabis Management walked a 55-acre outdoor cannabis farm in Oneida County. On September 22, 2026, one year to the day later, OCM’s Deputy Counsel wrote to the farm’s owners that, based on the condition of the cannabis, the agency could not permit it to be sold. In the twelve months between those two dates, OCM never held the hearing the company asked for, never issued a destruction order, never seized the product and never tested it.
The farm belongs to Nonna Farms, LLC, the first social equity registered organization licensed under New York’s medical cannabis program and the first company ever permitted to grow medical cannabis outdoors in the State. Its crop was harvested, moved to an OCM-approved storage facility, quarantined, and weighed twice at the agency’s request. It was never sold. OCM’s own charging document put its value at up to $127,140,000. Today it is worth close to nothing.
Nonna Farms has now filed a renewed request for a hearing before OCM’s Office of Administrative Hearings and is asking the tribunal to find that the agency destroyed its crop without due process and in defiance of a ruling OCM’s own judges issued a year ago.
A Hearing Requested on OCM’s Own Form, Then Lost
OCM charged Nonna Farms on November 26, 2025. Twelve days later, on December 8, the company requested a hearing using the form OCM provides for that purpose. The hearing was never docketed. OCM has since represented to its own tribunal that it was unaware any request had been made. The signed request form was filed as an exhibit this month, by OCM.
How the Charges Came About
Because no medical licensee had grown outdoors before, there was no rulebook. OCM has acknowledged under penalty of perjury that outdoor cultivation was not an option on its application and that the agency changed its own policy to accommodate Nonna Farms. The one requirement it put in writing was security. Nonna Farms installed fencing, 42 cameras, perimeter alarms, flood lighting and round-the-clock staffing the same day.
Between May 21 and June 20, 2025, the company wrote to OCM four times asking for authorization to plant and for a pre-operational inspection. It gave its planting date in advance, copied the Chair of the Cannabis Control Board, and invited unannounced visits. None of the four letters was answered. With seedlings dying, the company planted.
OCM approved the site on July 25, 2025 without mentioning the planting. On August 4 it asked Nonna Farms to measure its flowering canopy and explained how. On August 18 the company reported 36 acres, more than OCM itself later measured, and sent photographs. There was no response. Inspectors arrived five weeks later. On November 12, on a recorded call, OCM’s Director of Compliance told the company the matter was not the start of a disciplinary proceeding. Charges followed fourteen days later: operating without the inspection Nonna Farms had asked for, planting before the approval OCM had delayed, and exceeding a canopy limit based on the acreage the company had volunteered.
The Canopy Cap Was Written for an Indoor Building
The 100,000 square foot limit OCM is enforcing came from the tier Nonna Farms selected on its application for an indoor facility in Castleton. OCM has conceded outdoor cultivation was not on that application. No regulation, decision or order sets a canopy limit for an outdoor medical grow. The only outdoor canopy rules in New York are in the adult-use regulations, which do not contemplate an outdoor medical license, and even those give outdoor farms more canopy than indoor facilities because an outdoor farm harvests once a year. Nonna Farms does not recognize the cap and will ask the tribunal to find it does not apply.
OCM Wrote the Settlement, Then Walked Away From It
On March 3, 2026, OCM proposed a settlement: Nonna Farms would keep its licensed product, sell the disputed remainder and surrender the proceeds to the State. The company accepted in writing within three days and lined up a buyer at $6.8 million. OCM took 133 days to put its first substantive position in writing. The buyer was gone. On the day Nonna Farms warned the buyer would walk, OCM said it would not recommend the company’s pending dispensary locations, the other sales channel its own framework depended on.
On August 26, two days before OCM’s next settlement response was due, inspectors arrived unannounced at the storage facility, ostensibly to weigh the product. They did not weigh it. They issued a Stop Work Order that afternoon. On September 3, OCM declared its interest in settlement “extinguished” and said it would seek appropriate relief. Nearly four weeks later, it has sought none.
OCM’s Own Judges Already Ruled on This
In OCM v. Omnium Health, Inc., decided in July and November 2025, OCM’s Office of Administrative Hearings held that holding perishable cannabis indefinitely is in effect a destruction order, because the product loses value until it is worthless, and that such a restraint is a sanction requiring a hearing before it is imposed, not after. OCM took no exceptions to those decisions. A year later the agency has repeated the conduct against the first social equity licensee in the State. Nonna Farms will ask the tribunal to find that OCM departed from its own precedent without explanation.
Leadership Turnover, Unanswered Letters
OCM has been under a Governor-ordered operational overhaul since 2024. In December 2025, the Governor removed the agency’s acting Executive Director and its Deputy Counsel following the Omnium matter. An acting Executive Director ran the agency from February 2026 until a Senate confirmation in June. Within Nonna Farms’ own file, the Executive Director changed, the General Counsel changed, and the matter passed through three attorneys. Calls were postponed, letters went unanswered, and deadlines OCM set for itself passed. Nonna Farms does not contend that anyone at OCM intended to destroy its crop. It contends that the agency lacked the people, process and leadership to keep its own commitments, and that the cost of every silence fell on the licensee.
The Cost
Nonna Farms’ social equity owners borrowed more than $7 million on OCM’s written assurance that “the compliance unit will work closely with you as you work toward operationalizing in New York State.” The company has had no revenue since the 2025 harvest. The debt is secured by the crop. The lender has moved toward foreclosure.
“We asked OCM for an inspection. We asked for approval. We reported our canopy when they asked for it. We accepted the settlement they wrote,” said a spokesperson for Nonna Farms. “Every time, the answer was either delay or silence, and every time, we paid for it. A year ago OCM’s own judges told the agency that holding a crop until it rots is a destruction order. OCM did it again, to the first social equity licensee in New York. That is a regulator failing at its most basic job. Social equity means nothing if the agency charged with delivering it cannot answer its mail.”
What Happens Next
Nonna Farms has asked the Office of Administrative Hearings to docket all three charges, hold a preliminary conference within ten days and assign an Administrative Law Judge on an expedited basis. It will ask the tribunal to find that the charges are not established, that the indoor canopy tier does not apply to an outdoor medical grow, that OCM’s restraint on the product has no basis in the Cannabis Law or its regulations, that the crop was destroyed without due process, and that OCM abandoned its Omnium precedent without a stated reason.
The company is represented by Patrick J. Hines of Hodgson Russ LLP. It is prepared to proceed on any date the tribunal sets, as it has been since December 8, 2025.
About Nonna Farms, LLC
Nonna Farms, LLC is the first social equity registered organization licensed under New York’s medical cannabis program and operated the first outdoor medical cannabis cultivation permitted in the State, in Vernon, Oneida County.
Media Contact Information
Robert Kato
bobbykato@gmail.com
917-753-6000
News Source: PinionNewswire