Growing Medical Cannabis in Israel

In the fall of 2018, Eyal Policar a vegetable and date farmer from Zofar, Israel was deciding whether to take advantage of an opportunity the Israeli government presented to expand into the medical cannabis business. As part of his farming operation, Policar, who had extensive land and water rights, decided to explore the possibilities of his business adding a fully indoor medical cannabis operation. Zofar is a moshav in southeast Israel close to the Jordanian border. A moshav is an Israeli agricultural town whose farmers participate in a cooperative agricultural community of individual farms. The moshavim, as they are called, are similar to kibbutzim with an emphasis on community labour. They were designed as part of the Zionist state-building programme in the early 20th century, but in contrast to the collective farming done in a kibbutzim, farms in a moshav tended to be individually owned. Israel is home to two unique types of agricultural communities, the kibbutz and moshav, which were developed as Jews from all over the world made Aliyah to the country and embarked on rural settlements in the early 20th Century.