FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

This Food Bank Is Using Compost from an Illegal Cannabis Farm

Sixty bags of compost seized by Welsh police after a raid on an illegal cannabis farm have been donated to a local charity. Volunteers are using the fertiliser to grow produce that supplies its food bank.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB
Photo via Flickr user Park Ranger

Something oft overlooked in popular culture's image of the ballin' drug lord is the level of decidedly un-ballin' paraphernalia it actually takes to establish a large scale drugs operation.

Not to glorify the DIY skills of those who profit from illegal substance manufacture, but you've got to respect the number of trips to B&Q involved in setting up a meth lab. When the rozzers come with their battering rams and sniffer dogs, it's not just the drugs that are done for—it's a good chunk of man-hours and hardware smarts, too.

Advertisement

READ MORE: I'm in an Open Relationship with my Compost

Of all the drug production games, cannabis is possibly the most equipment-heavy, due to the specific light and humidity conditions needed to produce anything more than a few wilted leaves (not to mention the bypass job on your electricity supply). A glance at the press photos from any provincial cannabis bust reveals the Monty Don-esque rows of neatly ordered plant pots and hydroponic feeds found in your average grow room.

It's kind of sad for that calibre of gardening kit to rot in an evidence bag.

A police force in Wales seems to think so too and has come up with an unusual use for the horticultural spoils of a recent cannabis raid. Earlier this month, Dyfed-Powys Police force donated the compost seized during a raid on a cannabis farm in Pembroke Dock to local charity Pembrokeshire Action To Combat Hardship (PATCH).

According to a police statement, "There was a lot of compost and fertiliser that the police have to dispose of. There was so much it would be a shame to see it go to waste. Now it has gone to a good cause, who can use their cash for other things."

While police in Lancashire have sold off ex-cannabis den dehumidifiers for charity and West Midlands Police gave seized compost to local primary schools and allotments last year, Dyfed-Powys Police's donation seems to be one of the only ones to a food charity.

We got a phone call from a police officer in Pembroke Dock who said, 'We've got all this compost from a cannabis raid.' I just had hysterics.

Advertisement

"We got a phone call from a police officer in Pembroke Dock who said, 'We've got all this compost from a cannabis raid.' I just had hysterics thinking we were going to grow cannabis," explains PATCH co-ordinator Tracy Olin. "They assured me it was clean. I realised the police aren't that daft; the bags were unopened."

PATCH is using the donated compost not to grow cannabis, but for its "Growing PATCH" project, an initiative that sees service users cultivate fruit and vegetables on a small plot of land in Milford Haven. All produce is given to the charity's food bank, a system which is among the first of its kind in the UK.

"There are about 60 [bags of compost], which we worked out was about £300 worth because they really are the big bags," says Olin. "I'd never done gardening in my life but there was a team of us with two of the PCSOs that are particularly involved with PATCH and we were planting potatoes and I thought, wow, I really like this!"

What's next? Crack spoons donated to soup kitchen cutlery drawers? Ziploc bags used in experimental community art projects? Walter White's meth van would have made a great mobile library.

Whether other ex-drug production items can be of benefit to charitable organisations remains to be seen but Olin says the donated compost will help Growing PATCH increase its reach in the local area.

READ MORE: People Are Relying on Food Banks in the UK More Than Ever

"We've got potatoes, onions, beetroot, and carrots growing there at the moment and people have given us money to buy seeds," says Olin. "It's a volunteer-led project and we're planning to have supported children from a local school coming to help us as well. The aim is to teach skills to service users because I believe—the way we're going—we're going to have to grow all our fruit and veg like we did postwar."

So as you light up for 4/20, spare a thought for whichever lackey's job it was to choose the most cost effective bag of compost and drag it around a semi-ventilated attic room. Let's hope they left a few bags unopened, too.