Oregon cannabis harvest floods market again, driving prices even lower

More than a million pounds of marijuana flooded an oversaturated Oregon market last October, keeping prices low and further straining burdened cannabis businesses.

Oregon’s marijuana cultivators harvested more than 2.5 million pounds of wet cannabis last October, with 1.3 million pounds of “usable” marijuana entered into the state MJ tracking system by December.

That’s down slightly for the wet yield in 2017, which saw 2.6 million pounds of wet cannabis, but a bump from the 1 million pounds of usable cannabis harvest that year.

According to one analyst, Portland-based Beau Whitney with New Frontier Data, prices fell by 50% after the 2017 harvest, and he expects to see them slide by 35%-50% more after the 2018 crop fully hits the market.

Donald Morse, a cannabis consultant based in Portland, said marijuana growers reduced the number of plants they grew in 2018 – or didn’t grow at all.

At the beginning of January, 57 cultivation licenses had been surrendered and 70 had lapsed.

– Associated Press