Chefchaouen
More actions
| Chefchaouen | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Rif Mountains |
| Geography | |
| Country | Morocco |
| Province/State | Chefchaouen Province |
| Coordinates | 35.05, -5.12 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 2,300 km² |
| Terrain | Steep mountain slopes and valleys of the western Rif, mostly rain-fed fields; approximately Chefchaouen Province outside its Mediterranean coastal communes |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Mediterranean |
| Growing history | |
| Dated accessions | 2008–2023 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 13 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Chefchaouen is a landrace cannabis growing area in Chefchaouen Province, in the western Rif Mountains of northern Morocco, where cannabis is grown for hashish. The national cannabis survey of 2004 found 62 per cent of the country's cannabis in the province: 75,195 hectares, on 46 per cent of its farmland.[1] Since 2022 the province has been one of three in which Moroccan law allows cannabis to be licensed.[2]
Spread into the province
The surveys of 2004 and 2005 traced cultivation from the communes of the central Rif, where cannabis had been grown since the sixteenth century. Over the previous twenty years it had spread west across the whole of Chefchaouen Province, and from there north into Tétouan, west into Larache and south into Taounate. The new fields often replaced forest, and also good farmland and irrigated plots.[1] The sociological study attached to the 2004 survey centred on the province a zone where cannabis had arrived in the early 1980s, in some places in the early 1990s, and where growers considered the crop tolerated, not a right handed down from history.[1]
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy and Kenza Afsahi place part of the historic cannabis zone itself in Chefchaouen Province, where cultivation had long been tolerated and growers were likely to resist eradication.[3] In Jamal Bellakhdar's account, cultivation overflowed the Senhaja country of the central Rif in the 1980s into the lands of the Ghomara, the Beni Boufrah and the Jebala, where it had until then occupied only small areas.[4]: 136
Area under cannabis
The joint surveys of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Moroccan authorities measured the province's cannabis from satellite images. It covered 66,699 hectares in 2003 and 75,195 in 2004, a rise of 13 per cent while the national total fell.[1] In 2005 it fell to 40,529 hectares, 56 per cent of the national total and a quarter of the province's farmland. The survey put the fall down to drought, which hit rain-fed fields hardest, and to government warnings ahead of eradication; the government reported 150 hectares eradicated in the province that year.[5] Bellakhdar notes that the reduction fell mainly on Larache and Chefchaouen, the last provinces the crop had reached.[4]: 136
Most of the crop is rain-fed. In 2005, 83 per cent of the province's cannabis was on unirrigated land and 17 per cent on irrigated land. Its rain-fed fields gave the highest yields in the survey, 621 kilograms of dried plant a hectare, against about 2,000 kilograms on irrigated land.[5] The 2004 survey illustrated rain-fed cannabis at Beni Smih and irrigated cannabis in the valley of Sidi Abdeslam on the Oued Aoudour. It also recorded more than 3,500 hectares of forest burned that year, mostly along the edges of the areas where cannabis was most concentrated, and 620 hectares cleared illegally between January and September.[1]
A study of the commune of Bab Berred used satellite images to map its land cover in 2005, 2015 and 2025. The authors measured farmland in place of cannabis, which they call almost the only crop there. It grew from 40 to 52 per cent of the commune, most of the growth coming after 2015 and taking scrub and forest, and it was concentrated between 600 and 900 metres on slopes of 15 to 30 per cent.[6]
Trials at Bab Taza
From 2014 to 2016 Ismail El Bakali and colleagues grew five cultivars at Bab Taza, at about 600 metres: the local kif plant, which they call Beldiya, and the imported Avocat, Mexicana, Critical Plus and khardala. The fields were worked by hand in the local way. The local plant was sown a month earlier, on 15 March, and ripened in about five months against six for the imported ones. Its cannabinoid profile stayed stable across the three harvests, while those of the imported cultivars changed from year to year.[7]
Legal status
A decree of March 2022, under Law 13-21 on the licit uses of cannabis, allows the cultivation and production of cannabis, and cannabis nurseries, to be licensed only in the provinces of Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen and Taounate.[2]
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected | Locality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calvo AQ2792 (2008) | Calvo AQ2792 herbarium specimen, Bab Taza (2008) | Bab Taza | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230001 | Bni Ahmed Charika 87 (Bni Ahmed) General Population 2023 | Bni Ahmed | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230002 | Bni Ahmed Lgharbia 88 (Bni Mizar) General Population 2023 | Bni Mizar | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230003 | Oued Mmalha 89 (Oued Lmalha) General Population 2023 | Oued Lmalha | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230004 | Bni Salah 90 (Taliouan) General Population 2023 | Taliouan | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230005 | Bab Taza 91 (Khzana) General Population 2023 | Khzana | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230006 | Bni Drkoul 92 (Lkoub) General Population 2023 | Lkoub | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230008 | Bab Barrad 95 (Bab Bered) General Population 2023 | Bab Bered | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230009 | Tamourout 96 (Tamoror) General Population 2023 | Tamoror | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230013 | Dardara 100 (Akart) General Population 2023 | Akart | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230014 | Talambout 103 (Houama) General Population 2023 | Houama | |
| INM-MAR-CHE-0520230016 | Fifi 105 (Al Hrayeq) General Population 2023 | Al Hrayeq | |
| VIB-MAR-CHE-0100000001 | Chefchaouen General Population | Chefchaouen |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Agence pour la Promotion et le Développement Economique et Social des Préfectures et Provinces du Nord du Royaume (May 2005). Maroc: Enquête sur le cannabis 2004 (PDF) (Report) (in français). UNODC.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Décret n° 2-22-159 du 15 chaabane 1443 (18 mars 2022) pris pour l'application de certaines dispositions de la loi n° 13-21 relative aux usages licites du cannabis" (PDF). Bulletin Officiel (in français) (7080) (Édition de traduction officielle ed.). Rabat: 527. 7 April 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud; Afsahi, Kenza (2014). "Hashish revival in Morocco". International Journal of Drug Policy. 25 (3): 416–423. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.01.001.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bellakhdar, Jamal (2013). "L'histoire du chanvre au Maghreb". Hespéris-Tamuda. XLVIII: 107–141. ISSN 0018-1005.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Agence pour la Promotion et le Développement Economique et Social des Préfectures et Provinces du Nord du Royaume (January 2007). Maroc: Enquête sur le cannabis 2005 (PDF) (Report) (in français). UNODC.
- ↑ Amazirh, Zakaria; Touhami, Nadia; El Ammari, Mohamed (4 May 2026). "Dynamique agricole en montagneuses : Rôle de la culture du cannabis dans la reconfiguration de l'occupation des terres à Bab-Berred 2005-2025 (analyse spatio-quantitative)". Territoires, Environnement et Développement (in français). 5 (1): 258–275. doi:10.34874/IMIST.PRSM/TED-V5I1.63530.
- ↑ El Bakali, Ismail; Mannani, Nysrine; El Kamli, Taha; El Bakali, Samir; Boutahar, Aboubakr; Chakkour, Soufian; Bakha, Mohamed (2025). "A comparative phytocannabinoid profiling of resin from five hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) cultivars from central-northern Morocco". Food Chemistry Advances. 8 101069. doi:10.1016/j.focha.2025.101069.