Small-Scale Cannabis Farmers Fear Losing Out

Since South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled cannabis legal for adults in private places in September, the market has swelled to a multibillion Rand industry, thought to be worth around R27 billion by 2023.

Though small-scale growers fear they will lose out on their slice of the profits, with large farms owned by corporations dominating the market.

There are a number of barriers to entry for those wanting to enter the market.  Currently a business must obtain a license from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority if they wish to grow cannabis for medicinal use.  This can often involve insurmountable and prohibitive costs.

The first such license was issued to a large Durban-based company earlier in the year.  The only others to have followed are similarly big commercial businesses.  In order to obtain a license certain measures must be put in place, such as the installation of a drip-irrigation system.  Setting up a facility such as this in order to obtain a license can cost up to R2 million ($28,000).

Cannabis has long been grown in Manhlaneni, a village in the Eastern Cape Province.  Beecee Nombanga, a community leader, expressed the concerns felt by his village, “our people feel betrayed, because all of the licenses are being issued to companies from elsewhere, while we who have been growing this plant here for generations, who have the skills, who have the knowledge, who have the land, are still being criminalised”.  

The government has given some indication that it will explore ways of bringing down the cost of the licenses, although it is yet to take any formal steps.  A spokesman for the Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform said at a stakeholder conference in East London “[w]e must not be left behind as cannabis is brought into the spotlight and the world jumps to grab their drag on the spliff”.