Zimbabwe lets approved farmers grow industrial hemp

Zimbabwe authorised approved farmers to grow industrial hemp on 20 September 2019. Farmers with written approval from the agriculture minister, and the state on its own farms, could lawfully acquire, possess and supply qualifying hemp. Cultivation had to take place on approved farms.

Industrial farming gained its own authorisation

The change followed medicinal and scientific production regulations in 2018. Those regulations created producer licences with extensive site, security and processing requirements.

The new hemp rules used a different legal route: they identified people allowed to handle hemp under the criminal code. The authorised groups were farmers approved in writing by the agriculture minister and the state or its organs operating state farms.

That gave agricultural producers a specific permission to grow for industrial purposes, linked to both the person authorised and the farm approved.

The original limit was 0.3% THC

The regulations defined industrial hemp as cannabis with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. Their definition included the plant and its parts, seeds and derivatives.

For a grower, the threshold determined which crop could qualify for the authorisation. Permission concerned hemp meeting that definition, cultivated by the prescribed people on the approved farms.

The regulations also expressly allowed those people to acquire, possess and supply hemp. These activities connected growing with obtaining planting material and passing the resulting crop through an authorised supply chain.

Detailed permits followed in 2020

A year later, the Agricultural Marketing Authority’s regulations added separate permits for general cultivation, research and breeding, and merchants. General cultivation and merchant permits lasted one year, while research and breeding permits lasted three.

The later rules covered approved varieties, security checks, labels, transport, seed and harvest records, and laboratory testing. They also provided a fee schedule, including US$200 for a cultivation application and US$500 for a merchant application.

The one-page authorisation of 2019 was therefore followed by a much more detailed system for running farms and handling their output.

The criminal-code definition widened later

In July 2023, Zimbabwe amended the criminal code to define industrial hemp at no more than 1% delta-9 THC by dry weight and exclude it from the cannabis-plant branch of the dangerous-drug definition.

That later change built on an industry already operating under authorisation and permit rules. The sequence in Zimbabwe began with approved farmers, developed into detailed production controls and then reached the broader definition in the criminal code.^[1][2][3][4]