Mr. Lee of Home Farm, Quidenham, near Attleborough, supplies Europe’s largest hemp processor at Halesworth. He grows hemp because it is environmentally friendly and needs no pesticides. Lee said, “It doesn’t make a fortune, but we’re supplying a growing industry.” Lee has grown about 50 acres of industrial hemp for the past nine years and has asked Southwest Norfolk MP Elizabeth Truss to intervene.
The Home Office has introduced licensing fees from Nov 15, which will cost 1,371 pounds for an annual inspection of cannabis sativa crops under the Misuse of Drugs acts 1971. A basic fee of 850 pounds for first-time growers or 326 pounds for renewal was set without consulting the industry or Defra. NFU VP, Gwyn Jones, said, “These license fees are now potentially the ble of straw that will break the industry’s back.
Hemp has been grown in England since 1992 and is susceptible to frost and is planted from mid-April when individual inspection was required. This was criticized as costly and unnecessary and replaced for more than a decade by a light-touch regulatory regime until the Home Office’s change of rules. I think the Home Office is confusing hemp with cannabis and doesn’t understand the repercussions of what they are doing with these new rules.
