Once selling for more than $4,000 per pound, bulk buyers are now shopping in the $300 to $500 range for fresh harvests, according to experts, and some growers reported clearing out their crops for less than $200 per pound for fear of being stuck with product.
The price represents a sharp drop from recent years, according to industry insiders.
“It’s been a steady decline since we got here in 2010, but with the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016, prices accelerated downward quickly,” Rachel Greene, a longtime grower with experience in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties’ cannabis programs, told The Epoch Times.
“It was a combination of a lot of people getting in the game and the old corporate warfare model of operating at a loss to drown out the competition.”
Prop. 64—known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act—was passed by voters and made recreational sales legal, creating the beginning of a regulatory framework to manage the industry.
Legitimate and illegitimate family businesses were severely impacted by the plunge in profits and salability of a once easy-to-move commodity, according to farmers.
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