Old Hands, New Rules: Traditional Growers in the Modern Cannabis Market
By Quinton Haslett
There’s a soft irony in the story of cannabis in South Africa. The folks who carried it for years—often under the radar or beneath official notice—are now trying to figure out how they fit into a legal industry that has finally caught up to them.
Meet the legacy growers—farmers and smugglers who built their lives around dagga (South Africa’s word for cannabis) long before it became legal. These individuals are now at a crossroads: how to adapt without losing what made the trade theirs to begin with.
Roots Deep in Soil and Secret Histories
In regions like Mpondoland, in the Eastern Cape, cannabis has been a staple crop for over a century. Farmers like Landiwe Msolongile, featured in a recent GroundUp story, traced their family’s livelihood to their grandparents’ dagga fields. She remembered how that crop supported schools, bought cattle, and put clothes on her siblings. But after decriminalisation in 2018, demand slumped. Suddenly, growing cannabis didn’t guarantee a market—many urban users smuggled instead, or cultivated small amounts at home. Msolongile shared:
“There was a time we made good money. Now, the same crop barely buys groceries.”
That’s the dilemma for many small-scale growers today: They were once part of a thriving informal economy—but now, formal markets often require licenses, quality standards, and capital they don’t have.
Some of the legacy growers doubled as smugglers or maintained close ties to networks moving cannabis into cities and even neighbouring countries.
Today, with cannabis legal for private use and cultivation under the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act of 2024, the same people face a new terrain. Licensing is expensive. The rules cap personal plants at four per person or eight per household, and permit only up to 600 grams per person or 12,000 grams per household. For large rural growers used to harvesting kilos and sending them via networks, these limits feel restrictive.
Some Are Switching Gears
Not everyone is stuck. A handful of traditional growers have invested in the legal framework. As reported by 2Firsts, traditional farmers—with enough capital—are partnering with companies to grow cannabis for export to Europe, meeting strict international standards known as EU GMP certification. But the challenge is steep: few small-scale growers can afford the facilities, paperwork, or banking relationships required. Others are working with community cooperatives or incubators. For example, the Township Cannabis Incubator in the Eastern Cape aims to help small growers access business training and resources—though progress remains slow.
Loss, Adaptation, and Frustration
For many, the post-2018 cannabis landscape felt less like liberation and more like being pushed aside. As legalised consumption and urban cultivation spread, the underground networks that once paid well shrank. Growers were left holding raw material with no route to sell it legally. Some old smugglers began adapting—offering consultancy to legal farms or growing small batches of high-end strains, but for many, that shift hasn’t been easy.
In Mpondoland, researchers observed that the old growers now struggle to compete with urban hobbyists or licensed producers who grow standardised, packaged cannabis for markets. Legacy farmers still tied their identity—pride, tradition and survival—to the raw fields that once fed entire families. Now those fields seem to barely feed them.
Real Voices, Real Struggles
While interviews with individual legacy growers are still scarce online, the patterns are clear:
- The Eastern Cape remains a heartland of traditional dagga—often grown in isolated valleys concealed from authorities. Many growers started before farms existed in official registers.
- Smugglers from border regions, especially Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal, speak less publicly today—but some have moved into transport services for the legal market, or logistics roles in emerging mediated supply chains.
A podcast episode (EUCannaJobs Potcast) interviewed cannabis experts, including Gareth Chetty, about legacy farmers trying to transition, but personal names remain limited.
What Legalisation Meant—and Missed
Decriminalisation in 2018 allowed adults to grow for private use—but it did not open doors to selling commercially. The 2024 Cannabis for Private Purposes Act allows modest personal cultivation and possession but leaves commercialisation in regulatory limbo. Most legacy growers don’t meet legal standards for selling. The policies require permits, traceability, and facility standards—triple the hurdles for someone used to drying leaves in their shed.
Meanwhile, the national Cannabis Masterplan proposes supporting community businesses—but bureaucracy and lack of outreach slow progress.
Still Standing: The Spirit of Resilience
Despite challenges, legacy growers show resilience. Many have switched to offering cutting flowers to legal farms or supplying landrace seed strains prized by new boutique growers. Some groups, led by NGOs like Fields of Green for All, are lobbying to ensure that laws and policies don’t exclude rural communities. They emphasise that the people who built the cannabis trade deserve a seat at the table.
Looking Forward: Bridging the Gap
There are hopeful signs. Programs in Limpopo and Eastern Cape have brought universities, local municipalities, and community growers together to map out shared benefits from cannabis commercialisation. These initiatives include job training, infrastructure investment, and cooperative formation—but they’re still in their early stages.
If these plans succeed, legacy growers could move from hidden fields into legal value chains—without losing their identity or being priced out.
Takeaway: Don’t Forget the People
The legacy growers and smugglers of South Africa have lived on the margins of law and profit for decades. They’ve carried the plant through mountains, bush, and city streets. Now, they face new rules, new markets, and new barriers.
But their history matters.
As South Africa builds its legal cannabis economy, it’s essential to make space for those who cultivated it when it was criminal—and who often did so to feed their families. That means policy that supports small growers, fair licensing fees, access to seed banks, and route to market channels.
If that can happen, this next chapter is about more than profit—it’s about justice, inclusion, and building a cannabis future that honours the past.