The area around the Alqueva reservoir in the Alentejo is an ideal place to grow cannabis on an industrial scale, so apt is the land that multinationals already are eyeing up the area in preparation for the legalisation of the drug in key European markets.
Portugal’s Left Bloc is pushing for the legalisation of cannabis plantations to supply already legal overseas markets and says the legalisation of cannabis cultivation is unstoppable.
Évora has had a cannabis plantation since 2014 where production is fed to a multinational pharmaceutical company.
The Alentejo districts of Beja, Évora and Portalegre already grow opium poppies for pharmaceutical companies in Scotland and Australia and the expectation is that cannabis could be worth €35 million a year to these Alentejano economies, if it allowed to be grown on a wider scale.
According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, there are 12.5 million people in Europe who use marijuana regularly with 87 million doing so from time to time.
Cannabis was cultivated in Portugal from the late Middle Ages until the 1960s with the industrial production of cannabis being an essential part of the rural Portuguese economy.
The hemp was used as feed and as a shoe-making material bit in the 1960s, cannabis growing was banned and only now is it seriously being reconsidered as it could revitalise the Alentejo's rural economy.
But there has been no change and in Portugal, the crop can not be grown by struggling farmers. Cannabis may not be produced even for direct sale into the pharmaceutical, rather than the recreational sector.
The debate will not go away and with rural regenration and exports high on the government's 'list of things to do', now is a good time for the Left Bloc to push this agenda.
