A family of farmers have converted their property from a chicken farm into a medical cannabis cultivation facility.
The property is currently for sale and is located at 641 Mountain View McDonalds Track in Mountain View (located roughly 1.5 hours southeast of Melbourne). It’s currently owned by Alison and Peter Drew, who moved to the farm twenty-one years ago with their five children.
Since moving to the 104.4-hectare site, they have farmed chickens, beef and dairy. But after their contract fell through with Inghams (Australia’s largest poultry producer), the family decided to turn to cannabis.
They’ve since converted their multimillion-dollar broiler chicken shed setup into a 7000 square metre climate-controlled space that someone could easily grow medicinal cannabis in. The space is pretty expansive and has several rooms plus remote lighting and climate control. The Drews also spent two years securing a medicinal cannabis cultivation licence from the Office of Drug Control, and the farm is now licensed to produce cannabis.
According to Alison, they hope to get $4.5 – $5 million for the property (which is one of very few cannabis-licensed properties for sale Australia-wide).
We’re treading new ground here. How many cannabis-licensed properties are on the market? Not many. We’ve had a fair bit of interest but no one’s obviously taken it to the next level.
Though the real estate listing may have seemed strange just a few years ago, it’s a sign that Australia’s legal cannabis industry is blooming. Australia currently has over 180,000 Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved medical cannabis users, 12,508 of whom joined the SAS-B scheme in November alone. From 2021 to 2028, the industry is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.7%.
The Mountain View farm is one of a handful of cannabis farms in Victoria. This article lists a few of the others.
