Zambia just became the latest country to legalize cannabis cultivation, but there\u2019s a catch: the southern African country is struggling with an unusual weather event that\u2019s making farming difficult.<\/p>\n
Zambia is experiencing its worst drought in a century. As world leaders\u00a0gathered in Madrid<\/a>\u00a0for the UN Climate Summit last month, southern Africa was already experiencing some of the harshest impacts of global warming \u2014 with some 45 million people in need of food aid amid crop failures.\u00a0However, in December, Zambia became the fifth nation in Africa to permit cannabis cultivation, and so cannabis farmers there will now have to grapple with the drought.<\/p>\n The leader of Zambia\u2019s\u00a0Green Party<\/a>, Peter Sinkamba, applauded the decision. He was quoted by pan-African news site\u00a0Sahara Reporters<\/a>\u00a0saying the move could earn Zambia up to $36 billion annually. \u201cDepending on how properly this is done, this could just change the face of Zambia\u2019s economy,\u201d Sinkamba said.<\/p>\n The conflict between cannabis and climate is a story that is all too likely to become commonplace in the face of climate change. It raises the question about how drought resistant cannabis actually is \u2014 and if there are methods of cultivating cannabis with less water that truly work.<\/p>\n An interesting irony is that, because of cannabis prohibition, even the DEA believes that the cannabis plant can survive without much water.<\/p>\n \u201cMarijuana is a very drought-tolerant plant. It\u2019s a weed, and they grow anywhere,\u201d DEA agent Bill Weinman told Denver\u2019s\u00a0Rocky Mountain News<\/a>\u00a0during a dry spell in 2002. \u201cDrought has little effect on pot crops. Plants prove hearty, surpassing yields of state\u2019s other crops.\u201d<\/p>\n This attitude has been mirrored in the hemp industry, which farms a plant that is functionally the same as high-THC varieties of cannabis \u2014 except for the fact that they don\u2019t have THC. In the lead up to the passage of the Farm Bill in December 2018, which legalized hemp (defined as the\u00a0cannabis sativa<\/em>\u00a0plant with less than 0.3% THC), many advocates touted the low-water needs of the plant. Advocates boasted that a hemp field can be grown to harvest on about half as much water as needed by an equivalent plot of corn.<\/p>\n \u201cIt uses more water at the very beginning of its growth,\u201d Geoff Whaling, chairman of the\u00a0National Hemp Association<\/a>, told the\u00a0Pacific Standard<\/a>\u00a0in May 2018. \u201cBut once it kind of passes its early development stage \u2014 about three weeks \u2014 it becomes one of the most drought-tolerant crops on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a trade-off. While it appears that the cannabis plant can survive without much water supply, limiting water intake too much appears to limit harvests.<\/p>\n In a May 2018 report,\u00a0Hemp Industry Daily<\/a>\u00a0reported on the findings of a Colorado State University study, which found that irrigated hemp produced nearly three times more seed than non-irrigated hemp.<\/p>\n Brian Campbell, a doctoral student in soil and crop sciences, grew two test plots at a northern Colorado site \u2014 one irrigated consistently, the other receiving only some eight inches of rainfall throughout the growing season. The irrigated plot produced an average of 1,100 pounds of seed per acre, while the non-irrigated one produced about 400 pounds per acre. Campbell\u2019s research led him to conclude that hemp\u2019s water use is actually high compared to other crops.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of myths about this crop, and one of them is that it doesn\u2019t need much water,\u201d Campbell told Hemp Industry Daily. \u201cIt\u2019s not that the plant won\u2019t grow,\u201d he elaborated. \u201cBut it\u2019s a no-brainer \u2014 you should irrigate your hemp plants if you want them to do well in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n However, marijuana growers have also found a way to grow cannabis without additional water through a technique called \u201cdry farming\u201d \u2014 that is, cultivation without irrigation. Dry farming is increasingly practiced in Mediterranean climates, with wet winters and dry summers. Farmers work to trap moisture in the soil that continues to supply the plant on its own, rather than needing additional water from irrigation. (In climes that get rain year-round, irrigation is not an issue \u2014 though\u00a0mold<\/a>\u00a0might be.)<\/p>\n Mediterranean climates include California, and dry-farming of cannabis is catching on in the Emerald Triangle as a part of the general trend toward sun-grown and organic product.\u00a0For example, the cultivators at\u00a0Sunboldt Grown<\/a>, which began dry-farming a year earlier on its lands in Holmes Flat, Humboldt County, told Cannabis Now in 2018 that they\u2019ve seen success growing cannabis with the innovative method.<\/p>\n \u201cDry farming is not for the faint of heart,\u201d admitted Sunboldt Grown\u2019s\u00a0Sunshine Johnston, recalling her fears as she saw her plants suffering under the hot summer sun. But she resisted the temptation to water them, and the results were very satisfactory \u2014 high-resin yields with up to 30% THC. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think what I learned last year is that plants actually prefer less water and no fertilizer,\u201d she said. \u201cThey really prefer to be on their own.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Also, cultivators of both hemp (cannabis without THC) and marijuana (cannabis with THC) have long maintained that some strains are more drought-resistant than others. The website of Barcelona-based\u00a0Royal Queen Seeds<\/a>\u00a0particularly names the indica-sativa hybrid known as \u201cCritical,\u201d popular across the Mediterranean, as sought among outdoor growers for being \u201cvery tolerant of high temperatures and dry weather conditions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Diversion of water for illicit cannabis cultivation has\u00a0long been a strain on Northern California\u2019s watersheds<\/a>, threatening the survival of salmon and other local wildlife. This is also\u00a0now an issue for the legal cannabis sector<\/a>, and if California\u00a0has another drought like it did in the 2010s<\/a>, legal cannabis growers will have to adapt.<\/p>\n In the coming years, it will certainly be a challenge for cultivators\u00a0worldwide to figure out new ways to grow cannabis with less water.\u00a0<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0have you ever tried dry farming cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Climate Change Puts Spotlight on the Drought Resistance of Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Zambia just became the latest country to legalize cannabis cultivation, but there\u2019s a catch: the southern African country is struggling with an unusual weather event that\u2019s making farming difficult. Zambia is experiencing its worst drought in a century. As world leaders\u00a0gathered in Madrid\u00a0for the UN Climate Summit last month, southernContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3476,50,13105,5,13106,13107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40728"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40729,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40728\/revisions\/40729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How Drought-Resistant Is Cannabis Really?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Dry-Farming Cannabis<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Climate Change Puts Spotlight on the Drought Resistance of Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"