Delta will soon be getting its first legal outdoor marijuana grow operation on farmland.

Rubicon Organics Inc., which runs a 125,000-square-foot greenhouse facility on 104th Street in East Ladner, this week announced it received its medical sales license, allowing direct to patient sales, as well as approval from Health Canada for certain site amendments.

The amendments address the expansion of its licensed area to include an 11-acre outdoor grow site on its 20-acre property in Delta.

The company says it intends to commence outdoor cultivation in 2020.

“I am excited to have a new dimension to our organic certified, licensed Delta facility and to be able to grow our extensive genetic library outdoors. Our expanded production capacity with our newly licensed outdoor grow is the next milestone that will allow Rubicon Organics to offer a broader portfolio of cannabis products,” said Jesse McConnell, CEO of Rubicon Organics, in a news release.

In addition to the outdoor grow area and medical sales licensing, Health Canada has also approved a 5,000-aquare-foot expansion the company’s processing area at the Delta facility.

The provincial government two years ago announced that local and First Nations governments can prohibit cannabis production in the Agricultural Land Reserve within their communities, but not if it is grown in ways that preserve the productive capacity of agricultural land.

The regulation gave authority to local governments to only “prohibit cement-based, industrial-style, cannabis-production bunkers on ALR land in their communities” and also stipulates that cannabis production cannot be prohibited if grown lawfully in an open field, a structure that has a soil base, a structure that was either fully constructed or under construction with required permits prior to July 13, 2018, or in an existing licensed operation.

Delta’s planning department noted the city also doesn’t have the ability to deny building permit or business licence issuance to prohibit facilities if all licensing requirements are met.