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Britain's first totally legal cannabis farm will open in the Westcountry after planning permission has been given for an undisclosed site in Wiltshire.

London-based firm Sativa Investments is behind the £10m scheme which will see a seven-and-a-half acre greenhouse built in the countryside.

The site will be used to grow cannabis plants for the production of medicinal cannabis and cannabidiol (CBD) products, Yahoo news reports.

The 300,000 sq/ft unit could grow almost eight tonnes of the drug per year based on industry standards, the Mirror reported in October.

It follows the announcement by Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, that UK doctors will be able to prescribe cannabis-derived medicinal products from November.

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Geremy Thomas, chief executive officer Sativa Investments, spoke to BBC Radio's Farming Today programme last Thursday (January 24) about security issues the company faced when "hoodlums from Frome" discovered the fields.

Mr Thomas told BBC Radio 4 : "Last year it was all about trialling 10 acres of industrial hemp that we were licensed to grow by the Home Office.

"One of the problems we had is a security issue where three of the local hoodlums from Frome spotted the fields from afar and started dancing around with their cameras and published that on Facebook, which prompted us to plough the crop into the ground very quickly."

Producer Heather Simons said these people were presumably dancing in the field because they thought the drug was being grown for "recreational purposes", but Mr Thomas explained the difference between certain cannabis strains.

He said: "The cannabis plant produce cannabinoids. THC is the compound which makes people high, CBD is the compound which is very much associated with the wellness industry here. The hemp plants that we grew had no THC, in fact the license conditions are very strict on that.

"We have a test facility here which will allow us to grow different strains of cannabis to assess with our laboratory here the cannabinoid content from each plant strain, but also we're interested in testing different forms of hydroponic mediums and we're also looking at different forms of lighting."

Global industry standards suggest each square foot of canopy produces 40 grams of raw cannabis plant which, in the last 12 months, has had an average wholesale gross revenue of £4 per gram.

Around 200,000sq/ft of the 300,000sq/ft glass house will be used to for harvesting cannabis, with the remaining third used for ancillary space such as walkways and seedlings.

The build-out costs for a high-tech facility are estimated to be £35 per sq/ft - or a total of £10.5 million.

Sativa said it will be advised on cannabis strain selection by Canada-based Veritas Pharma Inc.

The company also owns PhytoVista Laboratories, a Frome, Somerset-based cannabis testing lab.

As part of the consideration for the option, Sativa will also offer the farm owners where the glasshouse will be built the option to buy two million shares at 5p per share once the development is completed and operational. The current share price is 11.9p.

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