Hemp Serbia

In Serbia there is an ambiguous situation in the field of modern hemp breeding. On the one hand, the government supports agricultural producers specializing in the cultivation of industrial crops of technical cannabis by providing them with subsidies for the purchase of fuel and fertilizers, on the other hand administrative and legal barriers and lack of understanding of the direction of development of the industry restrain the development of cannabis in the country.

History of Serbian Hemp

Growing cannabis in Serbia dates back to the fifth century of our era. Peasants everywhere, up to the middle of the last century, grew small hemp crops in the floodplains of rivers. One of the first hemp primary processing factories opened in 1865 in the town of Futog (Vojvodina autonomous region), not far from which in Ojaci (Vojvodina autonomous region) there was a market in which from 150 to 250 tons of hemp fiber was sold weekly.

Modern Hemp

In Serbia there is an ambiguous situation in the field of modern hemp breeding. On the one hand, the government supports agricultural producers specializing in the cultivation of industrial crops of technical cannabis by providing them with subsidies for the purchase of fuel and fertilizers, on the other hand administrative and legal barriers and lack of understanding of the direction of development of the industry restrain the development of cannabis in the country. At the moment, government officials of the country are extremely tightly regulating access to any cannabinoids, absolutely not paying attention to the trends of world hemp breeding and a huge amount of evidence that the plant has significant therapeutic potential.

At the initial stage of resuscitating cannabis in Serbia, as well as in other European countries and Canada, the plant was grown to obtain exclusively grain yield. However, Serbian growers quickly found their way around, despite the fact that growing a plant to produce a seed crop is profitable, processing hemp straw / trusts, as well as leaves and inflorescences of a plant, can give the greatest profit. It is in this direction that the accents of the international market are currently shifting, and these trends are extremely relevant for Serbian hemp breeding.

Serbian cannabis carefully study the possibilities of processing hemp straw / trusts from 2015, but at the moment there are no production facilities in the country capable of processing the bast fiber part of the plant. The question of the processing of green mass of cannabis at the moment is not worth it due to the lack of a corresponding regulatory framework for this.

In spite of this, several Canadian companies are planning to lobby for the adoption of changes to the current legislation of the country, providing opportunities for the extraction of green mass of cannabis in order to obtain extracts and tinctures later used in the pharmacological, food and cosmetic industries.

Despite all the difficulties in the development of Serbian hemp breeding, there are prospects for the development of this sector of agriculture in the country. This is due to a fairly simple mechanism for obtaining permits for the cultivation of industrial crops of technical hemp. For example, in 2018, malaria narcotic hemp in Serbia was grown on an area of ​​just over 300 hectares, with an increase in plant cultivation areas observed over the last four years, which indirectly indicates the interest of the country's agricultural producers in cultivating the most profitable crop. Another feature of Serbian hemp breeding is the use of 2 national varieties of hempless hemp, bred for industrial use by Serbian breeders. In 2018, the Serbian variety of low-narcotic hemp “Elena” was mainly grown on the territory of the country, however, the new variety “Marina”, which is positioned as a variety with high fiber content (up to 42%), was recently added to the list of varieties allowed to grow in the EU. ).