In fact, this legislation offers and allows, in particular, producer farmers a guarantee of the flow of production through their cooperatives and sales contracts with operators authorized by the National Agency for the Regulation of Activities Relating to Cannabis (ANRAC).
Through a structured professional organization, this legislation will also allow small farmers to strengthen their negotiating power and their ability to improve production techniques. Thus, small farmers cannot sell their cannabis production directly to operators, including operators authorized by ANRAC, and are required to form a production cooperative, the only one authorized to establish a sales contract with the authorized operator, to negotiate prices and to deliver the production of the various farmers to the operators concerned and authorized by the Agency.
These measures also aim to ensure protection from the intrusion of new farmers who did not previously produce cannabis, knowing that the authorization to exercise the activity of cannabis production is only given to farmers who live in the three regulated provinces and operate plots initially cultivated with illicit cannabis.
The regulations will not allow the expansion of cannabis areas onto new areas and/or by new people or new farmers.
It also makes the granting of authorisation for farmers to carry out cannabis production activities conditional on the prior fixing of the sale price of cannabis production within a contractual framework with the operator authorised by ANRAC, thus ensuring visibility of the annual income of small farmers before the start of the agricultural campaign.
Also, small farmers can form processing cooperatives to benefit from ANRAC authorization relating to the exercise of the cannabis processing activity, able to directly enhance their production without going through a private operator authorized by the Agency.
Similarly, legalization has allowed farmers authorized by ANRAC to access public subsidies or existing financing programs for other agricultural activities, with a view to promoting and encouraging small farmers to make the necessary investments for the development of their production system themselves.
Thanks to this legislation, ANRAC has issued 3,029 authorisations since the beginning of 2024, within the framework of law 13-21 relating to the legal uses of cannabis, compared to 721 authorisations in 2023, which reflects that the number of these authorisations continues to increase, while farmers have shown a real desire to convert to the production of legal cannabis.
2024-08-22 18:29:56