Wholesale prices for hemp and hemp-derived products had several noticeable trends in the month of January: prices for input materials held relatively steady with slight increases in lower-volume trades of biomass; smokable flower prices may be past their peak, especially THCa flower; and with the ever-increasing number of refined product options, prices for distillates and isolates suffer as they compete with each other for relevance.
As we continue to see CBD biomass traded predominantly in lower volumes, often less than 50,000 pounds, prices have remained relatively stable, pushing the aggregate category up. Farmers are increasingly able to rely on established relationships with buyers, who in turn benefit from consistent and trusted input materials. CBG biomass prices also remained steady this month.
Overall, genetics prices dipped marginally in January as international sales to Southern Hemisphere customers slow and domestic farmers planting outdoors are idle. Cultivators producing crops indoors and in greenhouses for smokable CBD and THCa varietals remain active, but demand is levelling off.
For the first time in months, the price increases for smokable THCa flower have ceased, and a significant decline was observed. Both indoor and greenhouse grown THCa flower prices fell, by 5.8% and 15.8%, respectively, pushing the aggregate category down over 12%. The current price assessment for THCa flower remains higher than 10 of the 26 state cannabis indexes published by Cannabis Benchmarks.
All CBD Distillate categories – Full Spectrum, Broad Spectrum & THC Free – experienced declining prices this month, as did CBG Distillate. Price declines were not limited to the “traditional” products; nearly all of the refined products tracked by Hemp Benchmarks experienced falling prices. CBC distillate and HHC distillate both lost over 3% in value, while Delta-10 THC distillate lost 2.5%. Additionally, all isolate products reported on exhibited falling prices: CBD Isolate was down 3.0%, CBG Isolate by 2.0%, CBN Isolate by 1.8%, THCa Isolate by 2.0% and THCv Isolate saw the largest decline of all categories, losing 7.5% per kilo.
The cost to ship hemp products using both dry van and sprinter van cooled off to start the year after incremental increases during the final months of 2025. The recent winter weather phenomena that stretched across the country from Texas to Maine will surely disrupt transportation logistics east of the Mississippi River and along the East Coast, although any delays should be remedied within a few days.
