But at 6 a.m. on Oct. 13, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents with assault rifles and chainsaws raided Mr. Cohen's property in the oak-covered hills north of Ukiah, cutting down the 99 hefty plants, 6 to 12 feet tall, that were meant to provide marijuana for 1,700 members.
The ferritin rice work heralds a coming age of "designer crop plants" packing a hefty nutritional punch, predicts Michael Sussman, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin.
The high costs mean that there is little incentive to build these plants without hefty subsidies.
In addition to old hydropower plants, a hefty investment in wind, biomass and solar in recent years has raised the share of these sources in the total energy mix to 55%, compared with a global average of 12%, and about 20% in Europe.
But there is a hefty cost of building the chemical plant to do the conversion, which might run over $1.5 billion for a new Canadian plant that would handle 40,000 barrels a day.
His break came a decade later, when Big J Enterprises, by then doing commercial work, got a hefty chunk of a huge Intel plant expansion.
It has been replaced by a pair of planted slopes dotted with hefty steel watering columns.
The contracts—some of which do not expire for over a decade were used by plants as collateral for hefty bank loans to pay for environmental upgrades.
And they may have had to work harder for their food - the hefty herbivores needed about 400kg of plant-based material each day.
