Steven Tan walks along a narrow concourse in the Northern Leaf greenhouse in St Lawrence, Jersey, reading aloud the strains of his cannabis plants: Pink Gasoline, Moon Beam Gelato, Carbon Fibre, Gorilla Kush. Rows of plants stretch off into the distance. To the untrained eye, they look largely the same, with their distinctive jagged-edged, multi-fingered leaf shape and sticky buds like tiny pinecones.

But Tan, the CEO and director of medical cannabis manufacturer Northern Leaf, knows them intimately. “These plants are all different,” he says, stopping next to a mature Carbon Fibre specimen. “Just like humans.”

Northern Leaf is one of the largest licensed medical marijuana producers in Europe. Its 100,000-square-foot growing facility is based in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, located between England and France. Previously, this greenhouse was home to Jersey tomatoes, once a famed crop on the island that came close to extinction, thanks to growing fuel costs and cheaper competition from overseas. Now, it is fitted out with all of the technology required for cultivating cannabis that meets strict regulations for medical use, which include: automated irrigation, environmental monitoring, and air purification.

Despite being just 45 square miles in size, with a population of 100,000, Jersey—which lies 14 miles off the coast of the French mainland but is a British Crown Dependency—has emerged as an unlikely player in the medical cannabis industry. Although its total exports (over 9,200 kilograms in 2025) are small compared to UK growers, this represents an enormous amount per capita, and cannabis is fast becoming one of the island’s important new industries.

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