The Country Table Doesn’t Say Where It GrewThe Country Table Doesn’t Say Where It Grew

Germany buys most of its medical cannabis abroad. BfArM, the federal medicines regulator, keeps the running count: how many kilograms arrived from each country. For 2025 the chart reads Canada first at 93,006 kg, Portugal second at 55,164 kg, then Denmark at 9,319 kg, North Macedonia, and Malta.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/AusfuhrOpen source ↗} The chart is everywhere in the trade, and it is almost always read the same way, as a ranking of who grows the cannabis Germany uses.

That reading is mostly right, and for two countries it is wrong. The chart counts imports, not harvests. Cannabis cannot travel straight from a farm to a German pharmacy. It first has to be turned into a finished medicine at a licensed plant, a step Europe calls EU-GMP processing, and that plant can sit in a different country from the farm.^{[2, 3][2, 3]2Gesetze im InternetMedizinal-Cannabisgesetz (MedCanG)Open source ↗3Gesetze im InternetArzneimittelgesetz § 72 – EinfuhrerlaubnisOpen source ↗} The country on the chart is the export country recorded on the import paperwork: the country the finished shipment left from. For most of the cannabis, that is also where it grew. For the rest, it is not.

What BfArM publishes is one number for each country: the kilograms of medical cannabis that entered Germany in 2025.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/AusfuhrOpen source ↗} It measures arrivals. On BfArM’s own table, the country column is headed “Exportland”, the export country.^{[4][4]4BfArMAus welchen Ländern wurden im Jahr 2021 welche Mengen Cannabis zu medizinischen und wissenschaftlichen Zwecken nach Deutschland importiert?Open source ↗} The paperwork underneath agrees. The application an importer files for each shipment records the name of the export country, and it has no line for where the plant was grown.^{[5][5]5Gesetze im InternetBetäubungsmittel-Außenhandelsverordnung (BtMAHV) § 1 – EinfuhrantragOpen source ↗}

Where the cannabis was grown is written down too, in a different file. German rules require the company trading the product to keep a record that names, for every product, the country it was grown in and the grower.^{[6][6]6BfArMHinweise für Händler nach § 4 MedCanG (Stand 09/25)Open source ↗} That file holds the real origin. The public chart is built from the import paperwork, so it follows the export country.

Two of the top five are where the reading breaks. Start with Portugal, second on the list at 55,164 kg, up 220% from 17,230 kg a year earlier.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/AusfuhrOpen source ↗} Portugal does grow cannabis: INFARMED, its medicines regulator, had licensed 38 cultivation companies by October 2025.^{[7][7]7Prohibition PartnersPortugal Medical Cannabis Market Overview 2025Open source ↗} Portugal is also one of Europe’s main hubs for the processing step and for onward shipping.^{[8][8]8StratCannThe global cannabis trade in 2025: Price compression, regulatory shifts, and market dynamicsOpen source ↗} The record shows how that works in practice. In 2020, flower grown in Uruguay was finished at an EU-GMP plant in Cantanhede, Portugal, and reached German pharmacies as a Portuguese shipment.^{[9][9]9MJBizDailyUruguay-grown medical cannabis available in Germany for first timeOpen source ↗} By 2022, South African growers were routing flower through contract manufacturers in Portugal and Malta, which processed it and released it into the German market in shipments of 100 kg and more.^{[10][10]10MMJDailyShipping medical cannabis from South Africa to GermanyOpen source ↗} So part of Portugal’s 55,164 kg is Portuguese cannabis, and part is other countries’ cannabis counted under Portugal’s name.

Malta makes the point more sharply. Malta’s shipments to Germany rose roughly 2,900% in 2025, to 4,858 kg, from almost nothing the year before.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/AusfuhrOpen source ↗} A farming industry does not appear that fast. A processing-and-shipping business can. Malta grows very little cannabis of its own; its licensed industry is built on importing flower, mainly Canadian, finishing it to the EU-GMP standard, and exporting the result.^{[11][11]11Prohibition PartnersMalta Medical Cannabis Market Overview 2025Open source ↗} Malta’s place near the top of the chart is earned mostly by finishing and forwarding cannabis that grew somewhere else.

None of this makes the chart wrong. It is a map of how cannabis enters Germany, and it is accurate as one. It is a poor map of where cannabis is grown, except for the countries that grow and ship their own harvest.

There is a practical point in it for anyone moving cannabis toward Germany. Where a batch was grown does not stay attached to it on its own. It stays attached because the paperwork carries it, with the farm named at every step, through processing and into the German trader file.^{[6][6]6BfArMHinweise für Händler nach § 4 MedCanG (Stand 09/25)Open source ↗} The public chart will keep crediting whichever country shipped the batch. Keeping the record of where it grew is a separate job, and it falls to whoever prepares the file.