Nevil Schoenmakers, one of the most famous cannabis collectors and breeders in history, renowned for starting the first cannabis seed bank, died on March 30, according to numerous reports from friends, fellow cultivators and a notice in a Western Australia newspaper from his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schoenmakers\u2019 friends commented online that the breeder had been battling Hepatitis C and its complications for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou fought bravely but lost the battle,\u201d his family\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in the West Australian. \u201cKnow that your dream will live on Nevil and the world will be a better place because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n In today\u2019s cutting-edge world of cannabis policy, much of the history of the old-school cannabis industry has been lost, as a revolving door of capital continues to welcome the waves of new faces not thinking about prison time or compassionate cultivation. But to any old school cannabis entrepreneur who ever worried about handcuffs, Schoenmakers is an absolute legend whose amazing work can be found all over the planet to this day.<\/p>\n Before becoming a breeding icon, Schoenmakers moved from his native Australia to\u00a0Holland in 1976<\/a>. Two years later, he began his cannabis growing adventure. In the early 1980s, Schoenmakers started the Holland Seed Bank with the help of a loan from the Dutch government. He moved into an old mansion the eastern part of the Netherlands and cultivated there. In time, thanks to a 1987 feature in High Times, the mansion became dubbed the \u201cCannabis Castle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNevil started the Holland Seed Company and started getting varieties from legendary people,\u201d longtime medical marijuana cultivator, advocate and patient Todd McCormick told Cannabis Now in a phone interview. \u201cThings like California Orange, Afghan, Skunk #1, Northern Lights, Haze\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n McCormick says a lot of the strains Schoenmakers became famous for were bred by other people. The Skunk #1, Cali-O and Haze came from Sam the Skunkman, while the original Afghan strains were probably from Mel Frank. \u201cYou can also look at things like Northern Lights \u2014 that came from a grower out of Seattle. He took these things and mixed them together, then things like Northern Lights x Haze #5<\/a> became legendary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Varieties we smoke today like Jack Herer<\/a> and Super Silver Haze have a lineage that\u2019s a result of Schoenmakers mixing together and sharing it with the world, McCormick said.<\/p>\n \u201cA majority of the genetics we are smoking today can be traced back to at least going through his garden,\u201d says McCormick. He also says, while Schoenmakers didn\u2019t breed certain phenos he worked with, \u201cPicasso didn\u2019t invent yellow, blue and red. But his combination of yellow, blue and red is greatly appreciated through his art, and that\u2019s the same with Nevil.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n McCormick says Schoenmakers took those colors of cannabis and made them his own by mixing them together into ways that came out way better than they ever were from the start. Schoenmakers was a true breeder. In addition to his work with cannabis, he also bred koi fish and race horses. McCormick believes that spirit was seen in his work across all mediums.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t just throwing pollen at plants. He was selectively breeding, testing, and he was taking those results and multiplying them for everyone else to great effect,\u201d said McCormick.<\/p>\n After working for years on developing strains, Schoenmakers\u2019 Seed Bank became the target of a \u201990s DEA anti-cannabis project known as Operation Green Merchant. Many of the people who purchased seeds from Schoenmakers got caught up in the sweep. In total, the\u00a0DEA arrested 119 people in 46 states<\/a>\u00a0during raids against retail stores specializing in horticultural equipment used to grow marijuana and cultivators who had purchased seeds.<\/p>\n One of the people Schoenmakers had used to distribute his seeds in the U.S. kept the addresses of all the people he\u2019d shipped seeds to on behalf of Schoenmakers. When the feds came knocking for him, he produced the lists to save himself.<\/p>\n In July 1990, Schoenmakers was visiting his family in Perth, Australia when he was arrested by Australian officials at the behest of the U.S. government,\u00a0according to the Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>. After spending 11 months in jail, he was granted bail and fled the country. He sold everything and went underground back in Holland \u2014 not knowing if the Dutch government would extradite him.<\/p>\n \u201cIn time, it turned out the Dutch government would not extradite him because what the DEA was charging him with was not a crime in the Netherlands,\u201d McCormick said.<\/p>\n All of Schoenmakers\u2019 work was sold to what became\u00a0Sensi Seeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not long after word got out of Schoenmakers\u2019 passing, Northern California breeder Shiloh Massive of Massive Creations posted a photo of the two of them in a greenhouse. Massive said that Schoenmakers had been an idol of his since he first read about his work in 1988. \u201cI was like, I want to be this dude. Later in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when I moved to Amsterdam and starting the seed company, I had a friend who knew Nevil,\u201d he told Cannabis Now.<\/p>\n Schoenmakers had already left his famed castle for the countryside and wasn\u2019t taking many guests. Massive was able to get the invite, and as he looked at koi fish with Schoenmakers, he says they talked about the legend\u2019s general ethos in breeding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole conversation was about breeding and breaking different things down. He told me his next step was he was going to take on the sultans and the princes and show them someone financially handicapped like himself could breed the greatest horses in the world,\u201d Massive said.<\/p>\n Massive says it wasn\u2019t that Schoenmakers was intense, he was just razor-focused on everything he was doing, not just cannabis. At the end of the day, he opened up to Massive about his remaining seedstock.<\/p>\n \u201cI was lucky enough to get some of those seeds. I got an A5, some Nevil crosses, and I think there was a [Skunkman] Sam indica in there,\u201d Massive said. Those genetics are now in his current projects, living on and growing into new and beautiful cannabis strains.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0how do you honor old school cannabis legends?<\/p>\n The post RIP: Legendary Dutch Breeder Nevil Schoenmakers Dies at 62<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Nevil Schoenmakers, one of the most famous cannabis collectors and breeders in history, renowned for starting the first cannabis seed bank, died on March 30, according to numerous reports from friends, fellow cultivators and a notice in a Western Australia newspaper from his family.\u00a0 Schoenmakers\u2019 friends commented online that theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59,3877,50,99,9575,2849,9576],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34213,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34212\/revisions\/34213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Sun Won\u2019t Set on His Strain Creations<\/h4>\n
A Run-In With the DEA<\/h4>\n
The Legacy Lives On<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: RIP: Legendary Dutch Breeder Nevil Schoenmakers Dies at 62<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"