Canadian hemp market “for home growing”

Citizens of Ukraine who have received the necessary package of permits for this can legally grow at home / on a personal plot / in a vegetable garden therapeutic hemp plants, legally using the constituent plants with enormous medicinal properties for industrial purposes (as food, drinks, feed for pets, cosmetic products, etc.).

We have repeatedly raised the issue of cultivating therapeutic hemp by citizens at home. A graph showing the percentage of the population that grows hemp at home in Uruguay is extremely illustrative. Taking into account the concept promoted in Ukraine on the possibility of legal cultivation of technical hemp for therapeutic purposes by citizens of our country for the use of the plant for industrial purposes, we tried to study this market in Canada - the global leader in the medical hemp market. In order to get an understanding that this market exists and is an extremely interesting niche in the modern hemp market, we will try to characterize it with separate strokes.

The home growing market in Canada is about more than just seed cultivation. It includes all the related infrastructure, which is designed so that the plant could be efficiently cultivated, processed, and used - lighting, fertilizers and much, much more.

Canadian experts name a number of success factors for this niche of the modern hemp market:

•  strong seasonal influence (consumers seek to maximize the benefits of the summer growing season);

• a  significant expansion of the market associated with the pandemic (forced stay at home due to quarantine measures opened up new opportunities related to the cultivation of the hemp plant);

•  extremely careful selection of seed material used for home cultivation.

In particular, according to the data of the Ministry of Health of Canada, from February to June 2020, sales of cannabis seeds "for home growing" increased eightfold. Despite the fact that at the end of summer, sales fell sharply, but remained relatively high throughout almost the entire August. The same consumers who planned to plant their plants indoors (for the winter) began to massively purchase seeds and related equipment in September.

 Market for seeds and related equipment “for home growing” in Canada

A number of cannabis company owners, as well as market experts, attribute the high sales of seeds for "home growing" to the interest in cultivation at home in general, in connection with the outbreak of the pandemic. This is not exclusively about cannabis, like the emergence of many other hobbies, hemp cultivation has become part of a set of new activities that people are interested in doing during a pandemic. Someone grows microgreens, berries or mushrooms in their free time, and some Canadian citizens are interested in the legal possibility of cultivating a hemp plant. 

Commentary of experts of the Association "Ukrainian technical hemp"

Most jurisdictions in Canada allow the legal cultivation of four cannabis plants per family. As the cannabis industry in Canada is monetized, consumers are motivated to create an environment in which a quality product can be obtained at the lowest cost. Naturally, the easiest and cheapest way is to legally grow your own hemp plant at home.

On the one hand, in Ukraine there is a market for the sale of psychoactive hemp seeds, the consumers of which are outside the legal field and are regularly prosecuted by law enforcement agencies. On the other hand, the poverty of the population, as well as the understanding that the use of the leaves and inflorescences of the hemp plant allows the citizens of our country to cope with a huge list of diseases without resorting to the help of pharmacological drugs (not always effective and having significant negative side effects) leads to the fact that Ukrainians forced to break the law by growing medical hemp or marijuana. One of the directions proposed for solving this problem by government officials is a mechanism within which citizens of Ukraine who have received the necessary package of permits for this can legally grow at home / in their personal plot / in the garden, therapeutic hemp plants, legally using the constituent plants with enormous medicinal properties for industrial purposes (as food, drinks, pet food, cosmetics, etc.).