THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Growing it in quality and quantity for the market is still a crime but the money involved is enough to keep people trying in many ways and many places to bring in a crop.

Vineyards, fruit orchards and vegetable crops thrive in this bucolic region of a state that feeds almost half the nation.

But in recent years, the rural tranquillity of the central San Joaquin Valley in California has been shattered by a surge in illegal marijuana grows.

This boom in large illicit marijuana farms has given way to more sinister sights not usually associated with pastoral scenes: motion sensors, security cameras, barbed-wire fences and armed farmers.

Two years ago, someone leased 20 acres along John Schmall’s property line. A couple of rows of squash and corn masked the marijuana plants, but as the weed plants grew taller and the skunklike smell stronger, there was no question what the main crop was. The smell at harvest time in the fall became unbearable, and the presence of armed guards watching over the valuable crop frightening.

“I worry about my kids playing outside,” said Schmall, 35, a fourth-generation farmer who grows grapes for raisins on 100 acres.

In a brash move to capitalize on a 1996 ballot initiative, Proposition 215, that legalized medical marijuana in California, growers have come down from hiding in mountainous national forests where federal and local law enforcement crackdowns intensified in the previous decade. They planted seed out in the open in Fresno County and the rest of the valley. Pot cultivation got another boost recently when Colorado and Washington state legalized pot, which increased demand.

And yet another fillip may be coming this year. In November, California voters may face as many as four ballot measures to legalize the drug. Nationally, polls show that the majority of Americans favor legalization.

“Most of the time, marijuana growing is happening out in the open,” said Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims, who has to put every one of her 15 deputies in the narcotics unit — and even some off-duty officers — on the case during the fall harvest. “During the season, everyone’s working marijuana,” Mims said. “We can’t even call them plants anymore. They are really trees.”

One grow covered 54 acres with plants up to 12 feet tall. Law enforcement has traced sales of marijuana grown here all the way to Massachusetts, Tennessee, Florida and numerous states in between. Nor is it just Fresno County. Madera, Kings and Tulare counties nearby are also grappling with the same problem. “We have proof of interstate trafficking,” Mims said.

But this boom has brought so much crime to Fresno County — nine murders since 2012 — and complaints from neighboring farmers that the county Board of Supervisors this month passed the strictest ban in the state: no marijuana cultivation, indoor or out. The law is expected to be challenged. The county had already banned all marijuana dispensaries.

Legalize industrial hemp and the growers will stay away from your farm. They don't want any wild pollen polluting their hybrid beauties.