"Forward onion" and "Ginger Your Army" are here again, how can farmers stop riding the roller coaster?
Beijing at the end of the year was chilly.
Ms. Zhang, who lives in Dongcheng District, came to a nearby supermarket and planned to buy more ginger and spring onions to make soup home. "I didn't expect it to be very expensive."
The CBN reporter noticed that the ginger of this chain supermarket is divided into two types: selected and promotional. The price of selected ginger is 15.80 yuan/kg, which is in good condition. The promotional ginger price is 6.99 yuan/kg. The ginger noodles are mostly damaged. And moisture, there is not much left on the shelf.
There is only one type of green onion with a price of 4.99 yuan/jin, and the stock is sufficient, but the customers who are selecting think that the price of green onions is significantly higher.
The offline price of onion ginger is rising, what about the selling price of e-commerce companies that are currently engaged in a "price war"?
The reporter inquired about a well-known e-commerce platform that specializes in "30-minute delivery" and found that 200 grams of self-operated ginger sells for 5.6 yuan, which is about 14 yuan per catty.
The price of 450 grams of self-operated green onions is 3.9 yuan, which is about 4.3 yuan per catty.
According to monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in November, the national wholesale price of ginger was 14.13 yuan per kilogram, an increase of 70.60% year-on-year, and reached the highest level in the past six years; the national wholesale price of green onions was 4.56 yuan per kilogram, an increase of 99.1% year-on-year, and reached The highest level in the past 4 years.
New onions are on the market with limited output
"The price of (green onions) has indeed risen, and the price has risen for more than a week. It used to sell for more than two yuan and a catty, and now it has risen to five yuan, but we have not made more, and the wholesale price has almost tripled."12 On the 9th, the owner of a farmer’s market in Chaoyang District, Beijing, told reporters that the wholesale price used to be more than one yuan per catty, but it is now more than 4 yuan.
The main producing areas of green onion in China are in North and East China. The total output of green onions in Shandong, Hebei and Henan exceeds 50% of the total output of green onions in the country.
A Shandong supplier who handles Zhangqiu green onions told reporters that the sale of green onions had not started at the end of October in the previous year, but more than half of them had been sold out during the same period this year, and now there is only a small amount of stock left.
Although business is tight this year, last year's green onions are worthless, and many of them are directly rotten in the ground.
He calculated an account for the reporter, and to collect one mu of green onions requires three people to plan and three people to bundle them. This requires labor costs of 1,500 yuan, "(the selling price) is not enough to cut the green onions."
Affected by this, many retail investors have reduced their planting area this year or have not planted them at all, missing this wave of price increases.
Ms. Liu from Pingyi County, Linyi, Shandong, told reporters that last year she lost too much when she planted green onions because she couldn't sell them. This year she has already transferred the land and went to work in the city.
Although the price of green onions has risen to historical highs this year, she does not plan to replant it. "Next year (how much) is also uncertain."
A farmer who grows several acres of Landrace scallions in Xingtai, Hebei, said: “It was sold out a month ago, and the land price was only 70 or 80 cents.”
Chen Mingjun, executive vice president of the China Vegetable Circulation Association, told China Business News that the fundamental reason for the rise in prices of agricultural products such as green onions is the current situation where supply is less than demand.
On the one hand, the efficiency of planting green onions in the past few years was not very good, which dampened the enthusiasm of green onion farmers. The planting area of major northern producing areas such as Shandong, Liaoning and Hebei has generally decreased; on the other hand, Shandong green onions have been listed recently. Due to the weather, the production of green onions will also decrease after being flooded.
The combination of two factors has led to the high price of green onions this year.
Entering mid to late December, the main supply of green onions will soon be transferred to southern regions such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
With a large number of new green onions listed, will green onion prices go down?
"The green onions are supplied according to the crop. As the price of green onions rose in late August this year, the plants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have already been sown, so the planting area in these production areas has also slightly decreased. According to our estimates, the overall supply of green onions this year is still biased. It’s very tight, it’s hard to see a sharp drop before the Spring Festival.” Chen Mingjun said.
Jiang Price experiences a "roller coaster"
Compared with the rising price of onion, the price of ginger has dropped recently.
The above-mentioned farmer’s market stall owner told reporters that the wholesale price of ginger was 12 yuan per catty at the Dayang Road Agricultural and Sideline Products Wholesale Market in Beijing a few days ago. Now it has dropped to nearly 10 yuan, and it will return to last year’s normal price of about 8 yuan.
Mr. Zhao, a distributor in Linyi, Shandong, also experienced this process.
He said that in late November, the price he bought from growers was 8-9 yuan, but now the price has dropped to 6-7 yuan, and he usually sells it to supermarkets or wholesale markets with a price increase of one yuan per catty.
In general, sales are relatively stable compared to previous years, so regardless of the rise or fall of the price of ginger, the profits they earn will not change much.
In recent years, the price of ginger has been on a roller coaster.
In November 2011, the market wholesale price of ginger at the producing area once plummeted from the highest 4.8 yuan/kg to 0.35 yuan/kg, reaching the lowest level in the past decade.
Since then, ginger prices have fluctuated up.
In July 2015, the purchase price of ginger was around 4 yuan.
After June 2016, the purchase price of ginger dropped to 0.5 yuan/kg.
Since then, the price of ginger has fluctuated between 2 and 4 yuan, rising to 6 yuan per catty in July this year.
Although the price of ginger has fluctuated sharply in recent years, the area of ginger planted in my country has shown an overall upward trend.
The lowest point of ginger planting area in 2015 was 3.24 million mu, and the highest point in 2018 was 4.48 million mu.
By 2020, the ginger planting area will be 4.28 million mu, an increase of 6.73% over 2019.
According to the monitoring of Zhuochuang Information, the output of ginger in my country from 2016 to 2020 will be 9.38 million, 8.93 million, 8.46 million, 7.62 million and 9.19 million tons respectively.
The main reason why the output of ginger has not increased with the growing area is due to natural disasters.
For example, in 2017, Shandong, the main producing area, encountered high temperature and dry weather, and the growth of ginger was affected. In 2018 and 2019, Shandong and Hebei suffered heavy rainfall and concentrated ginger blast outbreaks, which led to a decrease in ginger yield.
"Ginger can be stored and cannot be sold this year. Come again next year. However, in the past two or three years, the supply of ginger has continued to be insufficient, lack of adjustable inventory, and the reluctance of the growers and operators to sell, resulting in the price of ginger this year. Chen Mingjun explained that the current price of ginger has fallen due to the successive warehousing of new ginger since November. However, considering that the inventory balance is not large, the price of ginger will not drop sharply, and the price will still be higher than last year. The same period is higher.
How to get out of the vicious circle of soaring and falling prices of agricultural products
Chen Mingjun analyzed that the fundamental reason for the price fluctuation of agricultural products lies in the imbalance between supply and demand.
From the demand side, the annual consumption of agricultural products in my country does not change much and can be predicted. Therefore, the problem of supply is to be solved.
Specifically, first, we must improve scientific and technological means to reduce the adverse effects of natural disasters on agricultural products; second, we must steadily increase the planting area to ensure basic price stability.
At present, the level of production and organization of agricultural products in my country is relatively low. Most of them are small-scale peasant economy and "stall hawkers", and market supply is relatively unstable.
At the same time, the product lacks brand effect, farmers are often easy to follow the trend of planting, buyers are also a high-in-high-out, low-in-low-out model, it is difficult to form an order lock like industrial products.
"We always ask farmers friends not to follow the trend of planting, but it is more important to provide corresponding information services to help farmers make scientific decisions. In addition, the agricultural product price insurance explored in Shandong is partly subsidized by the government and farmers pay part of it. Promotion." Chen Mingjun said.
In 2021, will "forward onion" and "jiang your army" continue to advance?
A person familiar with the field of agricultural products said that the inherent characteristics of niche agricultural products determine that they are susceptible to factors such as climate and planting area, and such fluctuations are multiple times.
"Last year, Zhangqiu green onions rotted in the ground. Prior to this, Jinxiang garlic also often rotted in the ground. Year after year, it went back and forth. In this process, the circulation field of grasping information and making accurate judgments can make a profit, but for growers, is very happy roller coaster ride this year, next year may be the sad looking. ". (author: Machen Chen)