Talk:Cannabis cultivation in Colombia
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Page scope
Cannabis cultivation in Colombia covers how and where cannabis has been grown in Colombia: the plots of the 1940s to 1960s, the export crop of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the 1970s, growing in Cauca and the Valle del Cauca, the greenhouses and cuttings of northern Cauca, the kinds of plant and the names given to them, the replacement of older types by hybrids, licensed growing and self-cultivation, and the herbarium sheets and seed lines that preserve Colombian plants. It names no growers and gives no current plot locations. The chronology of the plant in Colombia is on History of cannabis in Colombia, the law on Cannabis law in Colombia and the names on the pages for each name.
Sourcing
The account of the 1970s Sierra Nevada crop rests on the historian Lina Britto's Marijuana Boom (2020), which draws on Betty Solórzano and Frida de Dangond's survey of 1977 and on interviews with Inderena's agronomists; on Darío Betancourt and Martha Luz García (1994); on the journalist José Cervantes Angulo's La noche de las luciérnagas (1980), which also reprints press reports and a study by the financiers' association ANIF; on an anthropology thesis on the Don Diego basin (Martínez González, 2011); and on the economist Joaquín Viloria de la Hoz. Growing in Cauca in the 1970s is from the anthropologist Anthony Henman's Mama coca. The modern period is from the Dejusticia study of Luis Felipe Cruz and Isabel Pereira (2021), two CESED studies (2023 and 2025), the drug observatory's report of 2017 and the United Nations crop-monitoring report on 2016. The collections are cited from the herbaria's own catalogues.
Discussion
How the Sierra Nevada crop was sown
- Solórzano and Dangond (as cited by Britto and summarised by Cervantes Angulo) describe seedlings raised in nurseries on the coffee pattern and transplanted in rows from April to June, with the harvest at eight or nine months. Betancourt and García describe seed scattered from sacks over cleared ground and a first harvest about five months later.
Who grew the crop in the Sierra Nevada
- Betancourt and García name "los indios y los 'cachacos'" among those who sowed. Time (1979) and Cervantes Angulo wrote of Arhuaco growers of a pale mona at higher altitude. Britto states that the Indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada have not grown or used marijuana, and the settlers interviewed in the Don Diego basin did not link Indigenous people to production. The reports of Arhuaco growing are on La mona and Mona Cielo Azul.
Area under the crop in the late 1970s
- The estimates differ in kind: about 70,000 hectares (attorney general's office, 1978), nearer 40,000 (Junguito and Caballero), 30,000 (Ruiz, 1979), 19,000 sown out of 300,000 suited (ANIF, as cited by Viloria), 60,000 hectares of "Santa Marta Golden" in 1977 (Solórzano and Dangond, as cited by Viloria) and, from satellite images, a peak of about 13,000 hectares in 1987. The figures given to the United States Congress and the press are on Bonanza marimbera.
Forest cleared
- The Fundación ProSierra Nevada de Santa Marta estimated 100,000 hectares of primary forest cleared (as cited by Britto); Viloria cites estimates of 120,000 to 150,000 hectares.
Where the Sierra Nevada seed came from
- Molano's team heard from growers that the Frío valley seed came from Mexico; the agronomist Ariel Martínez held that Santa Marta Gold was a cross of a native plant with plants from Hawaii and Sonora. The story that Peace Corps volunteers brought or named the seed is on Santa Marta Gold.
The THC figures of 2009
- The study by Florian, Parada and Garzón measured cannabis leaf, not flower, so its figures are not comparable with the flower figures given for creepy.