This is an extract from Policy reform and the international future of Moroccan Cannabis production by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy published in February 2026 in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
It is now understood in Morocco that the kif landrace is very valuable and offers significant environmental and economic benefits.
Therefore, in March 2024, ANRAC included it in the list of authorised cultigens. The agency then quickly reported that licences for the cultivation of beldiya (“the local” or autochthonous) or kif (as it was called until the introduction of modern hybrids, initially referred to as roumiya20 or “the foreigner” / allochthonous), had been granted to 73 production cooperatives, grouping 1225 farmers on an area of 1262 ha.
According to the same agency, as of 23 April 2025, only 903 farmers were growing kif on 757 hectares in the provinces of Taounate, Chefchaouen and Al Hoceima.
Kif works in Morocco, so why fix what is not broken
Growing kif rather than modern hybrids may indeed be of interest to growers with limited water resources for irrigation and/or environmental concerns (2024 is the sixth consecutive year of drought and record high summer temperatures in the country), as well as those who lack the financial resources to purchase foreign seeds, which sell for between 20 cents and 1 euro each or €2000 to €10,000 per hectare (kif seeds are free as they are harvested from previous crops, but kif allows lower flower and resin yields.
However, due to its relatively high THC content and to Moroccan law (13–21), the kif harvest can currently only be sold to the pharmaceutical industry, and some Moroccan laboratories are already developing THC-based medicines from kif.
But there is also a market abroad for THC-rich medical hashish, and some foreign entrepreneurs are already planning to export THC- and CBD-rich kif hashish for medical use to European countries that have legalised the medical use of cannabis). Kif will also have a different future if current plant-breeding programmes (mainly at the Moroccan National Institute for Agricultural Research, but also in private projects) produce a low-THC kif cultigen, as it is thought possible to reduce the THC content of kif to below 0.3 %.
To achieve this while preserving the landrace status of kif, the option would be to opt for phenotyping, but this would mean obtaining a new landrace according to a rather modern and comprehensive definition of landraces proposed by Casanas ˜ et al. (2017).
The resulting new landrace would most likely retain the high tolerance of the original kif landrace to the biotic and abiotic stresses of the Rif region, and perhaps its organoleptic qualities, but it could no longer be legitimately used as a source of the terroir product that is traditional Moroccan hashish (hashish that had average CBD and THC levels of 6.3 % and 7.9 % in the 1970s and 1980s, according to data collected by Robert Clarke.
Morocco chose landrace development over hemp imports
Morocco’s legalisation of Cannabis is a particularly interesting case study, given that it is one of the world’s largest producers of hashish, and therefore one of the world’s largest producers of Cannabis.
Morocco has chosen to legislate in a way that allows a degree of flexibility by not restricting itself to hemp, which it neither mentions nor defines as such, and by allowing different cultigens for certain uses.
By distinguishing between crops and products with a THC content below and above 1 %, Morocco has strategically opted for the upper limit of what the rest of the world calls hemp, without now prohibiting the cultivation of its autochthonous landrace, which has a THC content well above 1 %.
Also, by not setting a THC ratio limit for the production of medical and pharmaceutical Cannabis derivatives, Morocco has strategically kept the field of possibilities wide open, and high-THC (up to 70 % for the time being) Moroccan hashish and other derivatives (such as rosin, a highly concentrated resinous oil obtained by hot press) made from the kif landrace will be sold in Swiss pharmacies in 2026.
Morocco also seems to want to develop a low-THC variety of its landrace (producing a type 3 chemovar from what is essentially a type 2 chemovar, i.e. one characterised by similar THC and CBD levels) in order to no longer depend on imports of foreign cultigens and also to make its Cannabis industry as environmentally sustainable as possible in the current climate.
However, the Moroccan legal Cannabis industry is not without its challenges as it will now have to face the structuring of its national market, which is still non-existent and seems to be limited by a THC content lower than that allowed for production; and the development of a global market characterised by a great diversity and complexity of rules, but also, in all likelihood, favourable to local production and pharmaceutical independence.
Morocco still has to get to grips with the local market
Finally, countries such as France, which have a large CBD consumer market but little or no production, may eventually develop their production capacity, which is currently limited mainly by restrictive and often unclear and fluctuating legislation.
As for countries such as Morocco, which have significant production capacity but lack a local consumer market, they will need to develop such a market, which is still non-existent or, at best, nascent.
Indeed, the future of the CBD and other cannabinoid industries is likely to be local rather than global, with producers and governments in some countries calling for protectionist measures, particularly anti-dumping measures (Australia and Israel are particularly concerned about imports from Canada, which is a major exporter but restricts imports).
Also, the future of the phytocannabinoid industry is necessarily linked to that of the pharmaceutical and food industries, which have been the focus of global calls for strategic independence and repatriation of production facilities, especially since the stock-outs observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the thrust of the 2020 Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, one of the objectives of which is to improve the security of pharmaceutical supply.
The future of Morocco’s cannabis industry will then ultimately depend on a combination of factors, including changes in national legislation, national agricultural strategies and capacity, the degree of protectionism in trade policies, and even climate change.
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