Outdoor cannabis could be the next crop added to the long list of products grown in Chatham-Kent. The municipality often promotes how local growers produce more than 70 types of crops, but so far legal mass-scale cannabis has been restricted to indoor facilities.
However, a new company called 7 Farms Down is working to be approved by Health Canada so it can start growing the product on a farm in Merlin during next year’s season. Jason Guttridge, one of the partners in the business, said a reason this industry hasn’t taken off yet is many people don’t understand how to get into the business.
“Health Canada publishes guidelines, but they don’t publish anything that’s firm, so you’ve got to partner with these big companies that have done it multiple times, over and over, and they know what Health Canada is looking for,” he said.
“To put up a one-acre greenhouse that can produce pretty much the same as I can do on maybe five to 10 acres costs 10 times the amount of capital, so you’ve got to put $21 million up to build this facility, whereas outdoor I can build a small facility, a fence and some security at $1.5 million,” said Guttridge.
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