Our company is a registered commercial grower in Zimbabwe. The industry is currently legislated to grow only medical MJ and for this to be only grown indoor. This makes the final product pricing prohibitive which is against our company ethos. To change this legislation government insists that there are no countries that allow medical cannabis cultivation. Does anyone know of anywhere that allows medical MJ cultivation that I might be able to cite as an example?
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Is growing inside a greenhouse an option? Most medical regulations require some sort of controlled environment throughout the whole grow; something has a record of the weather/who was in and out/proof that you’ve got a plan in place to keep your crop safe and healthy, etc. A greenhouse and a good cultivation plan might make your regulators happy.
Medical production is a very loosely defined area. Pharmaceutical regulations are well defined, and agricultural regulations are too, but medical cannabis is a strange middle ground between the two.
Hopefully your conversation with your government helps to move things forward.
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The New York Times has an article published on Nov. 12, 2020 titled “Argentina to allow Medical MJ to be grown at home”.
I suck at linking things! Lol
You can use South America as an example of the country’s on that continent that have legalized Medical MJ @Russell.
Do some searching on the web, there’s tons of info about it.
Leafly did an amazing in debth look at all the pro legalization around the world. Isreal has had a Medical system for over a decade now. Maybe longer?
Just do some digging and you’ll find a wealth of info on the different ways country’s went about legalizing Medical Cannabis.
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@Russell, nice to see you back. There is definitely different ways to promote medical cannabis, and perhaps a couple blue gum poles with some 40% shadenetting could be seen as an indoor environment? In the USA hemp is being grown outdoors, processed into concentrate, infused and then sold as medical?
A friends legally licensed Lesotho operation is outdoor greenhouses with local landraces. It gets harvested and then processed at a larger facility down the road and exported as medical.
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Maybe we should talk privately and I know that alot of it has to do with zoning laws and things that happened in the past that need to change in order for everything to change
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Thanks for your input! It look like if we set up green houses this will suffice, so for ow we have this as an option in place. Also waiting for the regulator to confirm if enclosed UV shade netting will do too.
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Many thanks!
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Thanks for the reply Chris. I haven’t been on the GN forums for ages as we have basically spent two years trying to get everything sorted to start moving! Nearly there now. I am confirming with the regulator (hopefully today if shade netting will be considered adequate. I’ll update here in case it can help anyone once we are confirmed.
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I think the regulator is picking up a lot of regulations from the US/Canada and are not really innovating anything new. It seems the lowest entry cost is going to be UV shade cloth enclosures. If you keen to chat that is great! We are still new so everything still being set up (don’t even have off take agreements in place which seems to be the next hurdle. I didn’t know it is frowned on to produce with line of sight on end customer. That however might just be relative to our country?)
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Sounds great @Russell and good that things are moving forward. You might be interested in the Fields of Green book called a " A full spectrum manifesto for policy reform". Although not exactly a booklet for how to grow medical cannabis , its an outline on how a framework for cannabis in South Africa could work, Its about 100 pages of information that could be help. I also asked an old mate to join the forum, he is an old activist from SA, I think he might be growing in Zim.
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Awesome Chris. Thanks for the reference to the book, I will find it and see what I can learn. I have had confirmation from the regulator this morning that all grow operation legislation currently excludes growing outdoors (it also seems that if in greenhouses these need to be glass green houses). I will update when I have more information relating in case it can help anyone else.
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I know in michigan USA you can grow outdoors as long as its behind a locked gate and out of easy public sight, they usually sell outdoor cannabis in dispensaries for about 1/6th less then indoor grown cannabis
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