You may have noticed new shelves at your local coop offering CBD Oil at extremely high prices. Why is CBD so expensive?
The short story is this: new products on the market tend to be expensive. Without massive competition, prices remain high. Once competition picks up, they will relax and level off to normal, pricing.
The long story involves challenging farming practices and greedy companies. It wasn't until 2019 that the full effect of the 2018 Farm Bill which legalized industrial hemp as a cash crop.
CBD is expensive because farming is hard.
Producing and growing hemp is hard. If a farmer is moving from planting, growing, tending and harvesting vegetables or grains and then moving to hemp, they face a whole new set of challenges.
The work to grow and inspect the hemp plant requires lots of manual labor. When hemp plants produce more than the legally allowed amount of THC (the compound that makes you "high") those plants must be destroyed. The need to monitor is ever present.
CBD is expensive because extraction is tricky
There are two ways to extract the vital CBD oil from the hemp plant. Processors use either ethanol or carbon dioxide to extract the oil. There are pros and cons to both methods. Ethanol is cheaper but carbon dioxide does a better job, extracting more of the compounds than ethanol can.
To create a THC-free CBD oil, there is an additional step processors must take to produce a broad spectrum extract in refinement.
CBD is expensive because distribution is strange and hard
Big retailers like Target, for instance, refuse to sell products that contain CBD. The irony is, some retailers will sell the exact same product if it is labeled "hemp." The main reason is there is not federal leadership around it and there is a lack of education when it comes to CBD oil.
Essentially retailers are worried they'd be held liable for any mishap connected to the sale of CBD. It would be great if larger retailers would lead the way to selling safe CBD oil on their shelves since doing so would bring down the distribution tangle and lower shipping costs.
CBD is expensive because of greed
Unfortunately there are greedy companies and they take advantage of the lack of a national regulatory body around CBD so they hike prices up even more because a) they know CBD oil is powerful and b) people want it.
Have you ever seen a small bottle of CBD oil that costs $185? It's insane! It is thievery. Of course CBD oil cannot be free, but even the highest quality CBD oil should not line the pockets of men (and it is mostly men) who sit in offices. Farmers aren't seeing massive increases in their wealth by growing, tending and harvesting hemp. If they did, every farmer would abandon corn and soy and focus fully on hemp.
To give you an idea of how we price our CBD oil at Natural Path, please see below where we compare with a well-known, overly expensive competitor:
We offer the following milligrams/milliliter amounts along with a pricing guide:
500 mg CBD oil for $30.
1,000 mg CBD oil for $49.
2,000 mg CBD oil for $72.
To give you an idea of the incredible value given the pure, high-quality of Natural Path CBD, here is a competitor's pricing.
500 mg CBD oil for $35.
1,000 mg CBD oil for $56.
2,000 mg CBD oil for $112.