cannthropology
WORLD OF Cannabis PRESENTS
The Original
44 5 2
King of Cannabis
leafmagazines.com
Presenting the seedy saga of Nevil Schoenmakers— one of the most courageous, controversial and consequential Cannabis breeders in history. BORN TO BREED Born to Dutch parents in Perth, Australia on February 2, 1957, Nevil Martin Schoenmakers was a rebellious youth with a passion for biology and genetics – breeding parakeets as early as eight years old. He began smoking weed in high school and after graduating, started working in a university biology lab. There, he gained access to harder drugs – including morphine, to which he soon developed an addiction. After getting busted on drug charges, Schoenmakers first fled to Thailand, then on to live with an uncle in the Netherlands in 1976. It was there, while using Cannabis to help kick his heroin habit, that he discovered a copy of the legendary “Marijuana Growers Guide” (by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal) and was inspired to grow pot professionally. In 1980, he was approved for a business loan from the Dutch government designed to help recovering addicts, then used the money to set up a small commercial grow and started selling marijuana to the Dutch market. Only problem was, the strains he was growing – mostly from Nigerian, Colombian and Mexican seeds – weren’t very popular. So in 1983, he made the fateful decision to switch from selling weed to selling seeds and founded The Seed Bank of Holland.
MAR. 2022
In this never-before-published photo taken in 1985 near the Russian border in Hungary, Nevil first discovers the legendary “roadside ruderalis” plant he would later breed with other strains to shorten their flowering times.
THE SEED BANK OF HOLLAND In July 1984, Schoenmakers released the seed bank’s first “catalog” – a one-page listing of seed varieties offered for just 25 cents apiece. The following year, he took out a small classified ad in the back of High Times magazine where he offered American growers an opportunity to order the catalog for two dollars. Since he was only advertising the catalog rather than the seeds themselves, the ad didn’t violate any laws. For his business to be really successful, though, Nevil knew he needed to get his hands on better genetics. As fate would have it, some of the best Cannabis strains in the world were about to fall into his lap. In the summer of
1984, legendary Santa Cruz breeder “Skunkman Sam” Selgnij of Sacred Seeds traveled to Amsterdam, bringing with him over a quarter-million seeds of California’s best genetics, including Skunk #1, Cali Orange, Hindu Kush and Original Haze. Schoenmakers allegedly purchased half of Skunkman’s varieties, as well as a few other popular strains from West Coast growers (such as Northern Lights, Afghan #1 and Durban Poison). He also acquired a few landrace strains while adventuring in Asia, including the rare ruderalis species. It was from this dank, diverse gene pool – as well as his brilliant and ballsy entrepreneurial acumen – that Nevil would build his seed empire.
