Oregon is headed for another challenging year in cannabis, as production remains near its all-time high, though total retail sales are down about 5% from 2022 and retail prices remain near an all-time low.
When the final numbers come in from 2023, Oregon will record another massive harvest for the year, particularly from outdoor growers, who chopped down 3.82 million pounds of cannabis (wet) in October, rivalling the record-setting Croptober of 2021 at 4.36 million pounds.
State-licensed producers are on pace to harvest about 9.8 million pounds of cannabis, up about 1.7% from last year, but down about 13.5% from the monumental oversupply of 2021 when 11.1 million pounds were harvested.
Though much smaller than 2021, this year’s harvest still represents about 2.3 pounds of wet cannabis for every man, woman and child in the Beaver State.
Since 2017, the first full year of recreational sales in Oregon, production has shifted slightly in favor of indoor cultivation: about 14% of cannabis harvested in 2017 came from indoor grows, compared to 27% in 2023.
Meanwhile, outdoor fell from 63% to 57% during the same time frame, and mixed-light (greenhouse) cultivation went from 23% to 16%.
At retail, flower was $3.82 per gram in November 2023, down more than 45% from the pandemic boom in November 2020; concentrates, at $15.97 per gram, lost about 16% of their value during the same time period.
State-licensed retailers are on pace to close out 2023 with about $950 million in total cannabis sales, the lowest total for the Oregon industry since 2019, representing about a 5% drop since 2022 and almost 25% down from the all-time high of $1.18 billion in 2021.