Magazine

Strain Hunters – The people who chase weed around the world as a career

You might not know who Arjan Roskam is, but if you smoke weed you’ve probably smoked his. Arjan is the man behind some of the most famous marijuana strains in the world, among them White Widow & Super Silver Haze. He’s been doing that for over 20 years. Arjan opened his first coffee shop in Amsterdam in 1992 and has harnessed his marijuana-breeding skills into an empire known as Green House Seed Company, which brings in millions of dollars every year. Arjan won 38 Cannabis Cups, , 17 HighLife marijuana awards, and dozens more awards at marijuana competitions in Europe and around the world, and throned himself as the King of Cannabis.

White Widow

With his Strain Hunters he’s been combing the world searching for rare or vulnerable landraces strains of Cannabis from around the world. Strain Hunters’ announce that their sole intent “is to identify, locate and retrieve cannabis landraces that have not yet been studied, in order to give scientists and doctors the possibility to further enhance knowledge of the cannabis plant in the medicinal field”. But no doubt there’s a profit involved, and Arjan has a few controversies around him. Either way, no boring moments here.

First, get to know Ajran in this VICE documentary where VICE joins Arjan and his crew of strain hunters in Colombia to look for three of the country’s rarest types of weed, strains that have remained genetically pure for decades. In grower’s terms, these are called landraces.