Know Your Worth: New Mexico Struggles to Stabilize Market Prices
Times are tight. You feel it in the conversations, the hesitations, the ghosted follow-ups after a pitch. I spent the day talking to retailers—real shop owners, buyers, and managers. The people who decide what makes it on the shelf. And here's the truth nobody wants to admit: a lot of you are treating producers the same way your customers treat you - "What's the highest % at the lowest price?"
With over 8.8 million plants cultivated between January 2024 and February 2025, a clear picture emerges of how production is evolving—and what it means for the market.
A Year in the Dirt
Across the 14-month period, 808 producers reported activity, with monthly plant counts peaking in September 2024 at 783,600 plants, likely tied to the state’s outdoor harvest cycle. Compare that to just 501,100 in February 2024, and the seasonal shift is hard to miss. Yields followed suit, jumping from 551,300 lbs in the cold of February to a high of 861,900 lbs at the height of the fall harvest.
But it’s not just about volume—it’s about value. At the top end, assuming every pound was A-grade, September’s harvest could’ve been worth $1.81 billion. But with real-world grade assumptions baked in, the actual market value was closer to $861.9 million. That’s less than half the potential.
The Grading Game
The math is harsh but honest. With only 40% of product assumed to be A-grade at $2,100/lb, and the rest distributed among B, C (popcorn), and D (trim/shake) grades, the weighted average value per pound hovers around $1,000—far below top-shelf expectations. Over the entire dataset, this gap amounts to $10.7 billion in unrealized value.
In other words: the weed is growing, but the money isn’t keeping up.
Who’s Growing?
Some names dominate the grow game in New Mexico:
Southwest Greenhouse, LLC – 468,562 plants
Desert Peaks Farms Inc – 464,635 plants
Pecos Valley Production – 312,634 plants
Southwest and Desert Peaks alone account for nearly 1 million plants. These aren’t boutique grows—these are industrial-scale farms flooding the zone with biomass. Tracking monthly movement, Southwest scaled from 17,553 plants in December 2024 to 35,627 by February 2025. That’s not a bump—that’s a calculated ramp-up.
So What Does It Mean?
Operators can anticipate market saturation before it hits shelves.
Retailers can price aggressively when they know bulk product is incoming.
Regulators might want to take a second look at whether the floodgates are too wide open.
New Mexico’s market isn’t just about how much you grow—it’s about what you do with it. The data makes it clear: quality matters. Better trimming, grading, curing, and sorting are the keys to converting biomass into margin. Otherwise, you're just growing product for the bulk bin.
