Django Mezzanine fabric deployment, settings error - SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty

Question

So I have my project on my Ubuntu14 droplet on digitalocean, but whenever I try to testrun the server through the virtualenv, I get this error:

ImproperlyConfigured("The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty.")
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty.

Somehow, it has not registered the SECRET_KEY from the local_settings file. I deployed using Git, since I am running on Win7. Is there some step I missed to transfer the settings? Been running both "fab all" and the individual "fab install/secure/deploy" settings. Browsing the FTP shows that all files are on the server.

EDIT: Here is the terminal output when I do fab deploy. Seems to be some issue with setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=project.settings.

(blog) (base) C:\Users\user\Desktop\blog\project>fab deploy
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] Executing task 'deploy'

[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] Login password for 'adm':

[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out: sudo password:

[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out: Traceback (most recent call last):
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "/home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/__init__.py", line 22, in setup
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:     configure_logging(settings.LOGGING_CONFIG, settings.LOGGING)
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "/home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 56, in __getattr__
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:     self._setup(name)
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "/home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 41, in _setup
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:     self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "/home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 110, in __init__
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:     mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "/home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python3.6/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:     return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 994, in _gcd_import
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 971, in _find_and_load
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:   File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 953, in _find_and_load_unlocked
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'project.settings'
[1xx.xx.xxx.xxx] out:

Fatal error: run() received nonzero return code 1 while executing!

Requested: python -c "import os;os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE']='project.settings';import django;django.setup();from django.conf import settings;print(settings.STATIC_ROOT)"
Executed: /bin/bash -l -c "cd /home/adm/mezzanine/project && source /home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/bin/activate && source /home/adm/.virtualenvs/project/bin/activate && python -c \"import os;os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE']='project.settings';import django;django.setup();from django.conf import settings;print(settings.STATIC_ROOT)\""

Aborting.
Disconnecting from 1xx.xx.xxx.xxx... done.