The root cause of cheap fruit hurting farmers is still a lack of competitiveness

As the nationwide harvest and market arrival of the main fruit variety, Fuji apples, is fully completed, a price bargaining battle is unfolding between fruit farmers and buyers, repeating the phenomenon seen in the previous two years where farmers held back sales, ultimately making fruit hard to sell in most regions. Dalian is no exception; in some old varieties such as Jiguan in the northern mountainous areas, the selling price is even lower than the cost of production and management. The reappearance of the “cheap fruit hurting farmers” phenomenon caused by difficulty in selling fruit is not only due to the broader environment of increased production of various fruits and generally reduced market purchasing power, but a low level of competitiveness in fruit production and sales is also an important factor in the difficulty of selling fruit in some regions.

It is understood that, for a long time, apart from the price factor, another important reason for local fruit farmers holding back sales is the psychological imbalance caused by comparing with Shandong apple prices. Many fruit farmers do not understand why the price of Dalian apples is always lower than the purchase price of Shandong apples. It is understood that for apples of the same specification, the price difference between Dalian apples and Shandong apples can be as high as nearly two yuan per kilogram. Regarding this price gap, many dealers in our city who purchase apples in both Dalian and Shandong believe that the price gap is a surface phenomenon, and the root cause lies in the management level and market awareness of fruit farmers in the two places.

Although the intrinsic quality of Dalian apples is not inferior to that of other apple-producing areas such as Shandong, the overall management level and market awareness of fruit farmers lag far behind those of other producing areas. Shandong apples are almost all sold by grade. For apples of the same specification and size, what is purchased in Shandong is first-grade fruit already sorted by fruit farmers, while what is purchased in Dalian is mixed-grade fruit containing first, second and third grades, so the price is naturally different. As a mature apple production and sales market, Shandong fruit farmers have long formed a strong market awareness. After apples are picked, fruit farmers will, according to the requirements of buyers, not only classify them by size specification but also grade them by apple quality, and when merchants come to purchase, they directly offer prices according to different grades. In the apple-producing areas of our city, however, fruit farmers basically do not sell by grade, and some lazy fruit farmers do not even sort by specification, directly calling out prices in piles.

⟦NL> The market awareness of Shandong fruit farmers is also reflected in the production stage. Even before the apples are taken down from the trees, fruit farmers turn the apples on the trees for coloring, and pick them in batches according to the coloring effect, selling them in batches and implementing higher prices for better quality. In contrast, most fruit farmers in our city are accustomed to picking all at once and then waiting for a good price to sell. This production habit often means that some high-quality apples cannot fetch a good price either. Implementing single-tree or even single-fruit management and selling by grade is becoming the trend and competitive advantage of standardized production in many high-quality apple orchards.

To improve the level of competitiveness, in addition to raising management level and market awareness in the production and harvesting stages, updating variety selection and cultivation models is also urgent. In today's diversified market and sales channels, seeking quantity while neglecting management is clearly outdated, and relying on scale to promote sales is even more of a misconception. As a fruit-producing area with very limited planting area, Dalian fruit can never surpass other major fruit-producing areas in scale and quantity, but because of superior development conditions such as climate and geographical location, Dalian fruit can fully achieve “using the small to win over the big” in variety selection, cultivation methods, sales channels and other aspects, and win by characteristic high quality. In variety selection, efforts should be made to achieve "what others do not have, I have," for example, Xiaoguoguang fruit should be developed in appropriate amounts; sales channels should be continuously broadened, reducing the proportion of traditional channel sales and increasing the scale of TV shopping and online sales to attract the attention of mid-to-high-end consumers.

The number and scale of leading fruit sales enterprises are important indicators for measuring the development competitiveness of a region's fruit industry. Large fruit leading enterprises with the ability to expand domestic and international markets play a major role in promoting regional fruit sales. Compared with major apple-producing areas such as Shandong and Shaanxi, Dalian's leading fruit sales enterprises have an obvious gap in both scale and number. Building aircraft-carrier-level fruit sales enterprises is an important means to solve the problem of “cheap fruit hurting farmers” and broaden the fruit market.