Cape Town, South Africa. Josh Swart | 30 March 2021

This 30th day of March 2021 see’s a breakthrough moment for hemp farmers in South Africa! Following years of silence, the now Department of Agriculture Land Reform and Rural Development invited South African cannabis stakeholders to attend the National Cannabis Masterplan Consultation. To date we have not received any update from this department and excite the progress we see in unlocking this industry. 

The 3 hour call saw listeners receive an update on the master plan development, the parties involved in developing the plan as well as the proposed way forward. The Department has invited citizens to apply to various task teams that will be formed to hash out the legislative process. 

While the plan is somewhat comprehensive and seeks to gear this industry in a way that will be supportive to emerging small scale farmers it has a sizeable flaw of not including the cannabis community in the formation of this plan. Public participation has been overlooked and we are going to have to make some noise to ensure we are included going forward. We excite the opportunity to be included in policy development and thank the Department for making this available. Thank you Qure for sharing a copy of the plan on their website here. 

Department of Agriculture is to make an announcement regarding the license application – including for the farming of CBD – we will share when we hear this announcement!

Folks looking to farm hemp – sit tight, it looks like we might actually be farming this season!