Everywhere you look, there’s a sense of doom and gloom suffused into the CBD industry. Some of the most common complaints include:
- You can’t just sell low-grade hemp to anyone at artificially inflated prices anymore
- Shoppers are more discerning, making low-quality products harder to sell
- Federal regulation is still upcoming, rattling CBD brands that lack integrity
As you can see, none of the prognostications of disaster currently being hurled at the hemp market are founded in factual reality. CBD is not dying, disappearing, or anything of the like. The industry just isn’t as dramatic as it once was, and almost all of the bad actors have been weeded out.
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How did this massive transformation take place? We’ll walk through the timeline below. Then, we’ll provide the market’s best predictions regarding the global white label CBD renaissance that’s about to take place.
The 2018 Hemp Boom
In 2018, everyone learned what CBD was, and lots of farmers decided they wanted to grow it the following season. The reason was a piece of legislation called the 2018 Farm Bill, which made it legal to grow hemp containing less than 0.3% THC in the United States for the first time since 1971.
Predictably, 2019 was a bumper year for hemp production. The bill passed at the end of 2018, so the following growing season, thousands of inexperienced and almost universally unprepared rural farmers switched out their genetically modified corn or soy crops for poorly sourced hemp seed, which they were certain would yield a cash crop worth its weight in gold.
For a small handful of hemp farmers, the dream was realized. Most, however, were soon crowded out either by larger, more capable producers or simply by their optimistic lack of proper preparedness. Expecting initial costs to be offset by sky-high per-pound biomass pricing, some would-be hemp farmers were even driven bankrupt by 2020-2021.
A Consolidating Industry
Sourcing high-quality bulk CBD had been a challenge for brands prior to 2018, but no more. Suddenly, everyone from Joe Farmer to slick Mr. Corporate was hocking bags of CBD weed on LinkedIn, Instagram, Craigslist, or in your email inboxes. CBD was incredibly plentiful — but that created a conundrum.
Like THC cannabis before it, the artificially raised pricing of the CBD industry was supported by a false sense of scarcity — in turn enforced by a stigmatized, outlawed status. Now that CBD hemp was just as widely available as corn or hay, however, producers of low-quality products could no longer get away with undeservedly charging top-dollar prices.
So, yes, today’s CBD industry is undeniably haunted by bitter complaints from has-beens or wannabes who simply couldn’t cut it in the new, more professional market that emerged in the wake of the 2018 Farm BIll. Brands like Colorado Botanicals with actual moral fortitude, however, thrive in this new environment, which rewards honest, hard work rather than skulduggery and deceit.
Evolution, Not Dissolution
CBD might no longer be in the headlines every day, but that’s not a sign it has gone away — rather, CBD has just been normalized to the extent that nobody makes a big deal out of it anymore. The production of CBD products has mainly been taken over by responsible, larger companies that properly prioritize true value and consumer safety.
To be honest, CBD was never anything more than a trend to some — even to companies that made and sold it. Despite the fact that CBD has genuine, undeniable benefits, these companies treated CBD like it was a scam — and to them, it was. For the rest of us, though, CBD has become a simple, reliable solution to many of life’s aches and pains: a solution that will be here for life.
CBD Is Bigger Than Ever Before
Back in the early days of the CBD industry, most people who used hemp had already tried cannabis or were desperate for anything that might help. Now, though, hemp is no longer solely the territory of drug enthusiasts and the seriously ill. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and people of all ages and walks of life rely on CBD on a daily basis, and the cannabinoid has lost what little association with THC it once had.
And no, the fact that CBD is now so popular isn’t evidence it’s a scam. CBD isn’t propped up, after all, with multi-million-dollar TV ads and free cruise ship vacations for family physicians. It’s supported, on the contrary, by the honest opinions of millions of people who have used CBD and experienced its benefits for themselves.
Bit by bit, person to person, knowledge of CBD has spread like the opposite of a virus. This “contagion” of healing and freedom has now “infected” the entire American populace — and there does not appear to be a cure.
Massive CBD Growth Ahead
In May of 2022, respected market analysis firm Grand View Research made waves by predicting the global CBD industry would reach a valuation of $22 billion by 2030. In 2022, the global CBD market was only valued at around $6 billion, marking a nearly 17% yearly increase over the eight-year projected period.
If other analysts are taken into account, though, Grand View’s predictions may turn out to be somewhat conservative. Competitor Brightfield Group, for instance, believes CBD may be worth $16 billion globally just by 2025 — though Brightfield has been overly optimistic before. With the global CBD industry reaching an estimated $9.4 billion in 2023, however, we’re on track to at least closely coincide with Brightfield’s predicted value.
No, CBD Isn’t Going Anywhere
CBD has become big enough to be its own mature industry with a spider web-like network of suppliers, clients, and distributors. Hemp white labelers like Arvanna are confident that the CBD industry will only continue to solidify over the coming years, driving product quality even further up while eliminating any final traces of corruption and product contamination.
It still pays to research CBD products thoroughly before buying, but the days in which you couldn’t tell if CBD was high-quality are long past. Trustworthy CBD companies tell you everything you need to know up front, and they don’t have anything to hide when you come knocking.
