With the spring tea season approaching in March, hundreds of thousands of acres of tea fields or slow sales, can live-selling tea sell itself?

Client of Sino-Singapore Jingwei on February 28th (Fu Yumei intern Lin Yunsi) is about to enter March, which is the new period of spring tea in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guizhou. Affected by the epidemic, traditional tea farmers are worrying-neither can they find tea pickers and no tea merchants buy them. Tea is not waiting for people, and under the pressure of falling cold, a tea farmer told Zhongxin Jingwei reporter: "If you delay any longer, this year's spring tea will be 'disused'." Traditional sales channels are not smooth. Self-help through live broadcast and other means.

The entire county may lose hundreds of millions of yuan

Yu Xiafei is a tea farmer in Anji County, Zhejiang Province. From her father to her, white tea runs through the lives of the Yu family for two generations. She has a 300-acre tea garden in Yinjiang Natural Village, Tongshan Village, Meixi Town. She is engaged in seedling cultivation, planting, production, processing and sales of Anji white tea.

Photo courtesy of workers picking tea

Today, Yu Xiafei is watching the tea buds growing in her tea field, but she doesn't know what to do. No tea merchants came to her to buy tea throughout February. In previous years, this time should be the peak season for tea merchants to book tea.

"Anji white tea was picked in late March, and the golden buds were picked at the end of March and early April. Although there is no road closure, no news of tea purchases has been received so far." Yu Xiafei said, if there is an estimate, there are not as many as last year.

Mid-March is the latest period of spring tea in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. If not picked in time, the leaves will grow longer and larger, affecting sales. After picking the spring tea, if it is not sent to the factory for processing in time, it will become "waste tea", and the effort of one year will be lost.

"The tea before Ming is as expensive as the gold, and the value of tea picked in the next few quarters is not as high as that of spring tea." Yu Xiafei said that although they have professional fresh-keeping equipment and warehouses, the loss of slow sales cannot be compensated. After this time, Segment, demand will fall sharply.

Yu Xiafei calculated an account. The entire Anji County has about 170,000 mu of tea fields. The output of each acre is about 50 kilograms. It is estimated that at least 50 yuan will be lost per kilo.

Last year, Yu Xiafei's tea plantation had a total sales of about 6 million yuan and a gross profit of about 600,000 yuan. Speaking of the economic losses affected by the epidemic, she said that "it is impossible to estimate, nor dare to estimate."

At the same time, Yu Xiafei was worried, and there were also tea pickers who "can't pay for it". She said that because of the rapid growth of tea, green tea is short and expensive. One acre of tea mountain requires at least two tea pickers. Each year, the tea garden needs to hire at least 400 Henan tea pickers to pick and select tea. The tea picker hired last year was paid 160 yuan a day. This year, affected by the epidemic, it was difficult to recruit 180 yuan a day. She said that even if people were recruited, they needed to be isolated for 14 days, and many tea picking workers simply could not come.

However, spring tea cannot be mined in time and is likely to be threatened by the cold spring. "If the tea leaves fall into the cold spring season, the losses are unimaginable." The average temperature in winter this year is high, and the chance of a cold spring is extremely high, especially in the low mountains. Some tea farmers will lose their grains, which makes Yu Xiafei very worried.

"If the old tea doesn't go, how to meet the new tea?"

Gehu Village, Xinming Township, Huangshan District, Anhui Province is the place of origin of Taiping Monkey King and also the hometown of Sun Jin, a tea farmer. Taiping Monkey Kui belongs to the green tea pointed tea. It has two leaves holding a bud, is flat and straight, and has the reputation of "monkey Kui with two pointed tips, not scattered, not warped or curled." In the list of Chinese agricultural brands in 2019.

Taiping Monkey King. Photo courtesy

Huangshan has many famous teas, and tea is the leading industry in Huangshan agriculture. For local tea farmers, picking and making tea is a craft handed down from generation to generation, and it is also an important source of income.

According to Sun Jin, February is the season for weeding and seedlings in tea gardens, and March to April is the busiest tea season of the year for Huangshan tea farmers. Every year, the tea farmers and tea chambers of commerce develop a plan to arrange the amount of spring tea this year. "After the mining, Taiping Monkey King is priced one day a day. In order to catch up, tea farmers have to get up before climbing and climb a dozen miles of mountain roads. , Reached a tea plantation at an altitude of nearly 1,000 meters, picked fresh leaves on the mountain, and carried bamboo dippers full of dangdang before coming down the mountain to go home. "

However, this year's Huangshan tea farmers looked at Chashan but could not move forward. Sun Jin said that during the Spring Festival in previous years, Huangshan Scenic Area attracted tourists from all over the country, and it was also the peak sales year. However, due to the epidemic, Huangshan was empty this year, and tea was in the hands of tea merchants. "If the old tea doesn't go, how to meet the new tea?"

Sun Jin runs his own small tea garden of 15 acres, with an annual income of about 80,000 to 100,000. He introduced that the profit rate of ration tea is about 20%, and that of high-end tea and gift tea is about 80%, which accounts for at least half of the profits every year. Because of the epidemic, Sun Jin judged that the high-end tea and gift tea markets will be affected, and this year's profit is not optimistic.

Like Yu Xiafei, Sun Jin also faces the problem of the shortage of workers during the tea season. In previous years, Huangshan tea workers were invited from other places. Some tea workers went to Huangshan to make monkey ques directly after picking Anji white tea in Zhejiang. He learned that this year, the village may conduct a bottom-up. Each household will report the number of tea workers, and then the tea workers will be asked from the village to the outside, and will be distributed to each household according to the reported number and demand.

Photo courtesy of Taiping Monkey King respondent

Sun Jin talked to her mother about this year's losses, and her mother said with red eyes that Chashan was not worried about selling tea. "We just lost one year of tea. You know that some people will never drink tea again."

Online channels become "life-saving straw"

As with fresh produce, during the epidemic prevention and control period, offline business of tea farmers and tea merchants has been suspended. The traditional tea production mode, which has long relied on it, has been hit, and online channels have become their "life-saving straw."

In the past, Sun Jinjia's tea was mainly sold offline wholesale, accounting for more than 90%. "We usually have no time to take care of online sales. Until the epidemic happened, I didn't see the online sales volume of tea growing so fast that I felt like I was behind." Next, he wanted to open a Taobao store and put live tea sales on the agenda.

Although the number of online channels can be increased, the cost has also increased. "Because of the epidemic, the previous low-price agreements did not work, and logistics costs increased by 50%."

Tea farmers' online sales strategies have also been changing. Yu Xiafei has registered her own Taobao store. On this basis, she intends to apply for a Tmall store and JD Mall, while hiring professionals to run Tmall and JD stores.

In recent years, rural tourism has flourished. Yu Xiafei also opened her own tea garden for tourists and shot short videos on social networking sites. She plans to upgrade the live broadcast scene from indoor to outdoor tea gardens and take viewers to pick tea.

Big data analysis platform live eye data shows that, as of 10 pm on February 25, in the past month, a total of nearly 60,000 anchors on Taobao have been broadcast, a total of 800,000 broadcasts, nearly 500,000 visits, the number of anchors, the number of stores 2. The trend of rising powder and total traffic is showing a rising trend. Among them, the number of anchors of tea and wine belongs to the second largest category in the food channel, after the number of anchors of fresh vegetables and fruits.

Zhongxin Jingwei reporters watched several tea farmers live broadcasts on Taobao, and found that different anchors have different live broadcast styles, and some anchors scream to collect coupons on their heads, and place orders directly through the live broadcast room; there are also anchors and Tiannandibei. "Drinking tea and chatting about life is like entering a roundtable story party. One of the popular live broadcasts attracted nearly 10,000 people to watch in just 2 hours. The user interaction exceeded 70,000 times and received more than 30,000 likes.

Tea farmer Wang Lei is also a member of the live broadcast army. Four mobile phones, five supplementary lights, a set of sea of ​​tea, three or five plates of tea, Wang Lei's live broadcast connected thousands of fans on one end, and 180 acres of fresh tea on Wang Lei.

"No one watched it 3 times, and almost gave up," Wang Lei said. Her team consisted only of her, her lover, and her friends. They persisted for 5 nights and broadcasted 4.5 hours a night, and finally reached a thousand fans. "Online customers booked 10 pounds of new tea. Although not much, it's a bit immature, but it can also decompress and reduce stocks. It also allows us to understand the importance of online communication."

The "Evaluation of the Impact of the New Crown Pneumonia Epidemic on the Tea Industry and Suggestions for Response" recently released by the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences pointed out that the epidemic has a significant impact on the production and sales of early spring tea, but it will also force the tea industry to shift to a mechanized and intelligent direction Apply for industrial chain extension through format innovation. The outbreak of the live tea selling epidemic has spawned the development of a new industry, "Sister Cloud Cabinet", and realized "contactless shopping".

Because of the epidemic, Jiang Qi, vice president of the Tianjin Tea Distribution Association, also transferred the offline tea culture training course to online live broadcast. She admits that it seems that the entire people will be the anchor overnight. Now she has broadcast live for several days in a row, and has accumulated more than 300 fans. She intends to start with the tea culture explanation, and then slowly promote fresh tea. At the beginning of the outbreak, Jiang Qi also sent health tea to medical staff in Enshi, Wuhan and other places.

As the epidemic slowly subsides, the real economy of the tea industry will also recover. Jiang Qi said that live tea sales saved a lot of links, and the cost savings could be given back to consumers. In addition, live broadcast interactions could also form customer stickiness, and this boom would not disappear after the epidemic. "However, tea still needs the sense of smell and taste, exquisite utensils, elegant tea-tasting environment, and companies with special characteristics will definitely attract customers to return."

However, the hard work of the tea farmers is still looking forward to the support of the digital industry chain during the war. On February 6th, Taobao took the lead in launching the "Love and Help Agriculture" campaign in the country. In order for consumers to clearly see the fresh fruits and vegetables from the country of origin, the "Village Broadcasting" column in Taobao live broadcast also caused a strong rural sound. Tens of thousands of vegetable greenhouses across the country have directly transformed into live broadcast rooms and started selling vegetables.

The "Taobao Economic News" announced on the 26th that as of the 25th, Taobao's "Love and Help Farmers" campaign has helped farmers across the country to sell 54,000 tons of unsaleable agricultural products from 1802 counties in 20 provinces. According to Express 2 It was reported on the 20th that the total sales of loving agricultural activities exceeded 1 billion yuan. However, the reporter from Zhongxin Jingwei came to the "Today's Main Promotion" page, but found no tea farmers. It is understood that tea does not belong to edible agricultural products, so it is not in Taobao's "love farming" ranks.

Big live data from the big data analysis platform shows that the number of fresh fruit and vegetable anchors has dropped significantly in recent days, while the number of tea and wine anchors still remains high, but its traffic is far less than that of fresh vegetables and fruits. Tea farmers' Taobao live-streaming sales are still very fragmented.

After this epidemic, many tea farmers, including Sun Jin, have more expectations for the support of live broadcast platforms and e-commerce. Sun Jin admitted frankly that his tea plantation was boring in production, but forgot to enhance his ability to resist risks. After the epidemic, he had to re-divide the market share and "walk on two legs" as both an agricultural and a brand. The coming of the "5G era" will also bring more possibilities for e-commerce live broadcasts. They are eagerly awaiting a "spring" in the recovery of e-commerce. (Zhongxin Jingwei APP)

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