Friends in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines take a gamble to go on a private tour of a ‘ganja’ farm with a machete-wielding stranger, who teaches them important lessons about how legalization can help local communities, and how a natural disaster created a new, unique weed strain.
“It’s been good knowing you,” my sailing buddy Matt said with a nervous grin.
“Yeah, you too.”
“He could whack our heads off with that thing in a minute,” Matt said, referring to the machete in the hands of the local Vincentian man we were following.
“Yeah, hopefully it will be quick and painless.”
I looked at Matt and shrugged. Too late now.
This had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now we were wondering. We were following “Junior” along a narrow path on the side of a steep hill thick with a jungly-looking mass of banana trees, palms, ginger plants, and sugarcane growing above, below, and all around us. It did feel like it could be a trap. I mean, who were we to know?
“Do you want to come see my ganja farm?” Junior had asked us that morning in his unmistakably Vincent patois of Caribbean English.
I turned to my sailing buddy Matt. “Want to check out a ganja farm?”
“It’s okay–it’s legal,” Junior jumped in, “Come see.”
“Sounds interesting,” I raised my eyebrows at Matt and looked over at DJ20, who had given me what I took to be an ‘it’s okay’ nod.
“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Matt agreed.
“Okay, I’ll come here at 2:30 to get you. Okay?”
“No worries,” Matt and I replied in unison.
We were in a bar in Cumberland Bay–a very quiet bay on the west coast of the island of St Vincent with a ramshackle bar or two and not much else. DJ20, supposedly behind the bar, but mostly sitting with us, regaling us with tales of the island and questions about ourselves, was quickly becoming our new friend!
“He’s ok–you’ll be safe with him. Don’t worry,” DJ20 said with a smile.
A few hours later, we were in the back of a pick-up, weaving our way up the hill, past a village with rowdy school children being gathered by bustling mothers, and colorful teens hanging out in the shade of the large trees along the roadside. Colorful houses with tin roofs dotted the steep hillsides as we made our way through this relatively unpopulated area of the island on a narrow concrete road.
Junior pulled up beside one of these typical Caribbean homes, palm trees, and papaws swaying outside to the music of the wind.
“This is it,” he said, “Let’s go.”
We piled out of the pick-up and started to follow Junior. He was striding ahead on the narrow path we were now on, machete in one hand and a big white sack of I don’t know what on his shoulder. The machete didn’t look too welcoming!
But still we followed, me now barefoot as my flip-flop had broken as I slipped on a muddy patch. “Great,” I thought, “It won’t be good if I have to make a run for it.”
20 minutes of this walking and wondering. Suddenly, the jungle cleared, and we were at the top of a farm clearing, well above but overlooking the sea. It was neat and tidy, clearly well cared for. Junior had dropped his machete and was walking down through rows of pretty leafy green plants to a ramshackle patchwork-roofed tin shack below the ‘field.’
This was definitely a farm, and that was definitely cannabis. Our relief was palpable as we sped up and down the track to the hut and Junior, who had relieved himself of the rest of his load.
“You want me to show you round–check out my crop?”
Absolutely, we did!
“You said this is legal? How come?” I asked as we walked towards the little nursery area.
“The government changed the rules and made it legal to grow as long as we sell the crop to them for medicinal marijuana. We have to have a license, and I was one of the first to get one. The Rastas in the hills, they didn’t believe the government at first, but I decided to do it. Now they are too.”
Junior told us how the government had, in the last few years, helped Rastas and others with illegal crops to switch to this legal medicinal production, by helping with subsidized licenses. Of course, they could see proof with the success of others like Junior, too.
Quite fascinated with this government approach, I wanted to learn more.
“Yeah, I sell it to them and get my money. Good for me, good for the government, good for the people, good for the world. We just need the world to catch up with us and realize what the ganja helps with–cancer, pain, Alzheimer’s, and everything.”
It was in 2018 that the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines decriminalized the cultivation and production of cannabis for medicinal and scientific research purposes, with a strict licensing scheme. Junior, as he said, was one of the first to take advantage of this. His goal, he told us, is a nice big house for his family. I had to admire him as we walked around the farm, and he showed us the different stages of farming.
The seedling nursery was simple–a few well-placed sticks holding a plastic sheet a few inches off the ground. Junior peeled back one corner of the nursery to show us what was going on underneath the plastic. It looked exactly like a little crop of the green sprouts you see in health-conscious family kitchens these days.
We moved on to a former nursery, with clumps of plants about a foot high.
“When they get this big, we plant them out.” Junior pointed to a newly planted area. Walking over to it, he pulled a couple of plants I couldn’t recognize out of the way.
“Weeds?” I asked.
“Yes, we need to get rid of these. These and any male plants. They ruin the crop.”
Junior then showed us how to check each plant for buds–the female part that holds the valuable THC with its medicinal properties. The male plants instead have little round sacks at the nodes. And they have to go–straight on the rubbish pile! They can contaminate the female plants with cross-pollination, which reduces the yield.
After a relaxed tour of the farm and with a lot more knowledge about ‘ganja’ than when I arrived, we wandered back to the ‘production shed.’ Junior was explaining the ups and downs of the ganja farming and the tropical environment.
Just as local Vincentians were switching to legal medicinal cannabis farming, the seemingly worst thing happened. In 2021, La Soufrière, an active volcano in the north of the island, erupted. Masses of crops were covered in a thick layer of ash–not just cannabis crops, but all farming crops. Junior’s farm was in this ‘Red Zone,’ which is the most popular area for growing the ganja, and so he was hit along with most of the ganja farmers.
Fortunately, not only are these Vincentians resilient, but it turns out that the volcanic ash that destroyed the crops in the eruption is great for producing high-quality, fast-growing cannabis! The silver lining of this disaster is that it has actually created an international interest in Vincentian cannabis, and its unique “volcanic weed!” You have to love the irony!
In the production shed, Junior showed us some of the bud from his crop–presumably fine ‘volcanic weed.’ His ‘staff’ of two, presumably friends or family, were in the process of ‘testing the crop’ aided by a few tunes drifting out on the radio. They were bagging the bud, ready to take it to a government drying facility. This was a far cry from the days before 2018, when the Police would regularly raid the ganja farms in the hills, destroying the crops and livelihoods of the mostly Rasta farmers.
“You want to take some?” he asked, holding out some bud as we started heading home. “It’s ok–its legal here. The government made it so we can have five plants per house now, too.” Personal ganja use was really a deeply ingrained part of life here, not just for medicinal or relaxation purposes, but also for cultural and spiritual reasons, so it seemed only a logical addition to the changed laws.
Given we were going through immigration and customs the next day, we had no choice but to decline Junior’s offer, whether we wanted to sample the local volcanic weed or not.
Would you have taken it?
