Ontario’s Niagara College Commercial Cannabis Program Receives Federal Hemp Cultivation License

Niagara College’s Commercial Cannabis Production program has received a license to cultivate hemp from Health Canada which will enable students a hands-on opportunity to learn about the crop. The program will teach students how to grow cannabis indoors, in a greenhouse setting, and outdoors.

Alan Unwin, Niagara College’s Dean of Business, Tourism, and Environment, called the license “a natural progression” for the program.

“The uses and the industries for the hemp plant and the cannabis plant are quite different so this will help them when they graduate. It’s staying on top of things that we’re seeing in the industry. Our responsibility as a college is to meet that demand for the labor market.”—Unwin in a press release

Over the summer, students enrolled in the program grew a small hemp crop from seed in the college’s hop yard.

“It provides students with an opportunity to gain hands-on knowledge of outdoor hemp production,” Laurie Zuber, horticulture technologist with the Commercial Cannabis Production program, said in a statement. “This is a good introduction crop.”

Niagara College has two campuses in Ontario. The Commercial Cannabis Production program is a one-year, post-graduate, program.

In Canada, industrial hemp contains less than 0.3% THC. According to a Hemp Industry Daily report, Canada hemp exports exceeded $110 million Canadian dollars (USD $85 million) in 2019, which represented an increase of more than 20% from the year prior.