Ganja Farmer Entrepreneurs in Thailand's Northeast
The difference between North and Northeast Thai cannabis. Community enterprises cooperate to stay legal. Community enterprises under pressure.
The cannabis in Thailand grows mainly in the North & Northeast
Thailand is intensely regional. Yet, to stay competitive, community enterprises must maintain supply chains that reach nationwide.
The North and the Northeast are where the Thai cannabis industry is planting its roots. The largest grow sites and companies are all here, as are 2 key universities for cannabis research: Koen Kaen University, and Chaing Mai University. The important outlier, just north of Bangkok, Rangsit University, is the home to the Marijuana Studies Department and the Medical-Marijuana Research Center.
The duo that’s where the action is: the North and the Northeast; I think of them as contrasting characters, not so sharp as the odd couple, but oppositional in terms of size and culture.
The North is wealthier, more corporate and involved in international deals; the firms there are entrepreneurial farmers, with comparatively tight vertical supply chains. The Northeast, the area I’m focusing on here, is Thailand’s rice basket, where scrappy, independent farmer entrepreneurs might have to shoehorn a link or two into the supply chain to meet compliance.
Meanwhile, Central Thailand develops cannabis crops along its border with Burma, and even the densely populated, heavily industrialized East has dedicated space to large-scale cannabis grows.
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The primary domestic market centers in Bangkok and radiates East. The second-tier market includes Chiang Mai in the North, Kohn Kaen in the Northeast and Phuket in the South. (Just follow the stars on the map.)
The scarcity of investment capital – coupled with the need for one provider to be in many different regions across the country – means that Thai cannabis vertical integration has looser requirements than expected in North American or even Australian regulations. Vertical integration is still a requirement, it’s just defined much more broadly.
Bangkok to Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima): Gateway to the Northeast (Issan)
Leave Bangkok. Find the Nakhon Ratchasima Intercity Highway and take it north as far as goes; it’s about 3 hours, to Korat.
The Nakhon Ratchasima Intercity Highway along the Lam Thakong reservoir, on the trip from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, AKA Korat.
Whosee got the weed? Farmer entrepreneurs in the Northeast of Thailand
When the reservoir is on the left Korat is immanent. (Can’t miss it; the highway terminates there.) The highway opened in April 2021.
The Rak Jang (Sweet Melon) Farm in Korat
The cannabis farm that Kwan manages is one of the first licensed to grow and sell cannabis to medical facilities, which means they also have a product, which means they also have a dispensary. (Read the Memo of Understanding here.) That does not mean they own all of these; though theoretically, it’s possible.
Jomkwan Nirundorn, “Kwan”
In April 2021, the farm had 1,890 cannabis plants and 1,200 to 2,000 cannabis plants are developing for the second phase with the type CBD Charlotte’s. angel, which is a high CBD and low THC.
A whatever-it-takes community enterprise
To say that The Sweet Melon Farm “has” these elements is just to say that the farm is on the same team as these other players and that all the moving parts are covered under one license. On the outskirts of Korat, Rak Jang Farm has been yielding tropical fruit for sale in the local markets for 35 years. Their cannabis crop began in 2019.
Kwan coordinates a partnership between the commercial farm, a local hospital and the tech-savvy dispensary that operates in its lobby. As it has been with melons, so it is and will be with weed: the costs are rural and the market local, but it is hard not to look ahead and consider the increases in revenues that Bangkok could bring in the future.
Overgrown is a Thai weed company that tags its mission as “Cannabis cultivation for medical use under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Health”. They don’t distinguish their mission from Sweet Melon Farm’s at all on their Facebook page, where they boast: “We are growing and supplying cannabis plants to Chao Phya Abhaibhubejhr hospital”.
This banner shows the degree to which the farm and the firm integrate into one community enterprise.
Natura helps out with logistics and management oversight. A supply chain consulting company out of California whose tagline is “building the supply chain for the global cannabis industry”, they provide expertise in platform creation to assist in launching and scaling the group’s weed brands.
And here we are. Amid a 2 year-long, poverty-inducing, economy-destroying lockdown, a Thai cannabis company that has hired dozens of locals is hiring talent from California, the world capital of cannabis. Do cannabis people in Thailand “really want it?” Yea, I’d say so.
“Marijuana flowers” (buds) hanging to dry at Rak Jang Farm in Korat.
From farm to Pharma
The Sweet Melon Farm sends pallets of these beauties to be processed by the enterprise’s R&D. When the weed is ready for sale, it’s sent South toward Bangkok, on the other side of Khao Yai National Park, in Prochin Buri You can see the park and the mountains in the new highway map below.
The Hospital is in Prochin Buri, which is far, far to the east of the Nakhon Ratchasima Intercity Highway.
Rakjang Enterprises entered the market by teaming up with 17 licensed growers and the Chaophraya Abhaibhubejhr (Chow) Hospital. Ruk Jang Farm’s final products end up in Chao Hospital, 190 kilometers south.
By Khunkay - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Above is the Thai Traditional Medicine Museum Building, on the campus of Chaophraya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital (Chow Hospital). The café has cannabis-infused items on the menu. In light of the hospital’s rich history of traditional medicines (and the fact that it’s a hospital) I will bet the items are based on meaningful cannabis recipes, and not just culinary window-dressing to beguile tourists into paying more for food and drink only because they are garnished with a marijuana leaf.
Worse yet would be to buy cannabis cookies thinking they will get you high only to figure out that the confectionary inscribed with a weed leaf is sans THC.
I’ve said it before: No cannabis-infused food or drink that is legally available in Thailand will ever get you the least bit high.
Say no to canna-hype: Know where to go
Some cannabis-infused recipes are of course authentic and maybe hundreds of years old. They typically call for cannabis to be added to a stew or curry. Even with legit recipes, the cannabis ingredients (everything but the flowers) can be of high quality – and provide some health benefits and flavor enhancements – or they might consist of stems and leaves that were headed to the trash heap. Caveat Emptor!
If there is a public place I would try cannabis-infused food, Chow Hospital is it. The quality of cannabis is virtually guaranteed, as is all the organic food and drink on offer. They consider the café a centerpiece of their wellness outreach.
To visit the hospital on the way back from Korat, it’s preferable to travel through the mountains, that is part of the Khao Yai National Park.
Khao Yai National Park | © SITTITAP LEANGRUGSA
Final thoughts: Leave the enterprise in community enterprise
The term, “community enterprise”, appeals. It’s a vivid turn of phrase and evokes images of teamwork and hard days’ work, the virtue of pitching in, and so on. If you think about it though, community enterprise has two distinct senses (with some grey in the middle).
The primary sense of community enterprise.
To say, “Kong works as a full-time member of a ganja community enterprise in Korat,” means Kong is tied into activities of producing, in an enterprising way, amazing cannabis. The community is the enterprise.
Secondary sense of community enterprise.
If I say, “This enterprise is part of the community, and we would all be better off if the community was in charge of operations,” the community, in the sense of a group distinct from the enterprise, far from being the entrepreneur, is the bunch of consumers who voluntarily engage in commerce with the enterprise.
The Sweet Melon Farm is a shining example of a community enterprise in the primary sense.
The Thai Ministry of Public Health launched a pilot project to promote cannabis cultivation that uses “community enterprise” in the secondary sense, as it pledges to:
arrange training for community enterprises in developing products made of cannabis to generate more income for COMMUNITIES.
In this case, the community enterprise consists of seven families as members, which have been allowed to grow cannabis plants. It was selected as a model for cannabis cultivation. Here, the enterprise answers to the community, and the community answers to the authorities.
Villagers in the Buri Ram in the Northeast will send cannabis flowers and buds to the local hospitals that have a traditional medicine unit. The cannabis flowers and buds will be made into medicine to provide treatment for local patients.
Sounds generous on the face of it, but a moment’s reflection makes clear that we are talking about a small-scale labor-intensive collective farm. No leadership. No decision-making. No trial and error. No incentives. No enterprise.
If I invite you to join a cannabis community enterprise of your choice, which one will you pick? One that says, “if we are left alone, we will prosper”, or the one that says, “we can count on the powers that be to pay us something for the crops that we harvest.”
Is it just me, or is there something vaguely Maoist in the Ministry’s assumptions about what this community enterprise is and what it does. The idea is that poor farmers will benefit from public officials setting prices for a crop planted and harvested only for them, sold only at the price they dictate.
Initiatives like this one illustrate an odd pandering to an anti-capitalist faction within Thai cannabis.
It will be interesting to see how the 7 families who were selected to grow cannabis for the Ministry are holding up. My money is on The Sweet Melon Farm, Chow Hospital, Overgrown and Kwan.