A former chicken farm in Victoria is being marketed as a medicinal cannabis facility after the owners were granted a cultivation licence by the Office of Drug Control (ODC).

Owners Alison and Peter Drew have the Mountain View property, around 90 minutes from Melbourne, on the market for A$4.5m to $5m.

The couple have farmed beef, dairy and broiler chickens on the 100-plus hectare site since the turn of the century, but when they lost their contract with poultry giant Ingham’s they were forced to get creative.

Alison Drew told realcommercial.com.au: “We had a multimillion-dollar, purpose-built enterprise within the farm (for the chicken contract), so we looked at something that would fit the mould, which was pretty hard to do — broiler chicken sheds are built specifically for that.” 

“After many months of research, we decided to apply to the ODC for a medicinal cannabis cultivation licence — that took nearly two years — and we were granted [one] in April 2020.”

Drew added the property has 7,000sqm of climate-controlled growing space that would be the “perfect fit for cannabis” with minimal change to the infrastructure.

“We’re treading new ground here,” she said. “How many cannabis-licensed properties are on the market?”

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Hannah Adler

Hannah is a communications professional and early-career researcher in the disciplines of health communication and health sociology. She is a PhD student at Griffith University currently writing a...

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