Cannabis farmers urge regional trade before global exports

Caribbean cannabis cultivators have warned governments against rushing into international markets, insisting that national and regional trade must come first to protect farmers, strengthen local economies, and safeguard sovereignty.

A single message echoed across speakers at the St Vincent and the Grenadines Second Cannabis Conference and Expo Regional Cultivators’ Dialogue, where traditional cultivators and advocates from across the region met, namely, before chasing international markets, the Caribbean must first secure national and regional trade in cannabis.

Veteran Vincentian cultivator Julius Merritt-Cutler reflected on how far the movement hadcome: “Who would have thought that traditional cultivators in a country will sit down with state entities, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health, and even the police department? First time in the history of this country, first time in the history of the region, first time in the history of the world. Thanks to the struggles of traditional cultivators.”

But it was Saint Lucia’s Emmanuel Alexander, a legacy farmer, who set the tone bluntly: “We’re taking the rigid stance to say that we want to solidify the Caribbean. We have enough resources in the Caribbean to manage and to stop our administrators from borrowing from the national banks. Let’s be sustainable.”

For Alexander, sustainability means keeping control in the hands of those who built the industry.

He said: “The ball is in our court. Let us play the ball and let us score the goals. Before we think about international trade, let us first look at the national trade of cannabis, the regional trade.

Because we have not — we’re not able to satisfy nationally, neither regionally. But we’re running internationally with all this red tape. No, we’re losing out. We need first to service national, so we have enough naturally in all the islands and in the region.”

He warned against repeating the mistakes of past commodity economies.

“Remember the cocoa and coffee era and also the sugar era. We exported the raw product, and what happened? They sent it back to us refined … We are not going to send an ounce of cannabis internationally unbranded. … No. We do all the work of the branding, we send it to you branded.”

Alexander argued that tourism and local trade must be the foundation. He said: “If you want to smoke cannabis, what you do, you book an airline, you come to the Caribbean, any island.

You book your hotel, you book your taxi, you go to the restaurant, you go to the market, you patronise the people, smoke cannabis, and go back home and come again. That is the direction we’re moving, because we are going to safeguard the industry for the traditional farmers and the people of the Caribbean.”

For Alexander, protecting farmers also means linking cannabis to food security: “We’re now in post-pandemic, so what [do] we need to be more advanced. We need to have food sovereignty because we’ll be doing cannabis sustainably.

After one cannabis crop you cannot do a second cannabis crop in the same area. You have to do the crop rotation. That is why in Saint Lucia we did not set up a cannabis facility. I told my brothers no. If we do, we marginalise the country.”

He continued: “Seventy to eighty per cent of medication prescribed by the physicians are in rainforest areas. That’s a multi-billion-dollar business. Essential oils are also a multi-billion-dollar business … We need to start growing our economies from within the country, within the Caribbean, not from external shocks.”

From Jamaica, Abidan Tafari of the Rastafari and Grassroots Ganja Association (RAGGA) stressed that regional supply and demand should guide policy. He rejected overreliance on external systems. “Stop the fancy talk about we have to follow certain rules and regulations. Take that to the curb. A foolishness. We living in the same space. So we need to start living with each other … and trade amongst each other.”

The path forward, they argued, lies not in rushing to international markets but in strengthening local farmers, regional economies, and Caribbean sovereignty. Across the forum, the refrain was the same — cannabis must be used to strengthen Caribbean people, not just foreign investors.

tracymoore@barbadostoday.bb