When people think of cannabis production in developing countries, they tend to picture drug cartels and bandits.
The truth, says Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute (TNI), a Dutch drug-policy research organization, is that most growers are poor farmers, often women, who cultivate marijuana on small holdings in the hills and mountains.
Now they are competing with Western corporations. And with no international institution to represent them because of the illegality of marijuana in most of the world -- even the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, whose mandate is to fight rural poverty and hunger, has no experts or policy on this cash crop -- growers risk being left behind.