Wheat Quality Fails to Meet Standards, Causing Grain Selling Difficulties in Central and Southern Henan
In the granary, over 1 million jin of wheat is piled into a heaping mountain. The grain harvest was bumper, but Peng Zhihe, a large-scale grain farmer in Runan County, Henan Province, has his brows knitted into a knot. “Having been a farmer all my life, I have hoped for a full granary year after year, but this year the harvest was good yet the grain cannot be sold, which is deeply frustrating,” Peng Zhihe said.
⟦NL> Reporters learned through interviews in multiple places in central and southern Henan Province that due to repeated rainfall during this year's wheat harvest, wheat scab and black embryo disease occurred at a high rate, and unsound kernels exceeded the standard, causing wheat quality to generally fail to meet the national minimum purchase price procurement standard. This has led to grain accumulating in the hands of large-scale farmers and grain brokers in Zhumadian, Nanyang and other traditional main summer grain-producing areas of Henan, creating the problem of “difficulty in selling grain.”
A large-scale grain farmer in Nanyang contracted more than 2,000 mu of wheat this year. At present, more than 2 million jin of wheat has nowhere to be sold and has been backlogged for nearly a month and a half. She said: “Last year by June 20 the wheat was all sold, but this year there is still so much that cannot be sold. I never imagined selling grain would be so difficult.” To keep the wheat backlogged in the warehouse from continuing to mold and deteriorate as much as possible, she has to continuously use ventilation equipment every day. The electricity cost alone is about 600 yuan per day, and it is estimated that she has already lost nearly 300,000 yuan so far.
Grain brokers face the same problem. Zhang Xiaowu, a grain broker in Zhongzhuang Village, Runan County, rushed to purchase 1.2 million jin of wheat this year at a price of 1.1 yuan per jin, but unexpectedly found no way to sell it, so it could only be piled in the open. After more than a month, at least 5% of the wheat has already molded and deteriorated. “Now as long as someone comes to buy grain, I will sell even at a loss. I cannot just let the grain rot, but no one is buying at all,” Zhang Xiaowu said. Grain broker Li Yong has backlogged 1.1 million jin of wheat. Li Yong estimates that so far, storage costs plus mold-related losses have already caused a loss of at least 200,000 yuan.
Li Ming, director of the Purchase and Sales Planning Division of Sinograin Henan Company, said that amid sluggish demand in the grain market, this year in Zhumadian, Nanyang, Xinyang and other areas of central and southern Henan, affected by weather, wheat yields were bumper but quality was not high, and sprouted kernels, diseased kernels and moldy kernels in the harvested wheat seriously exceeded standards.
Li Ming introduced that, judging from the current procurement situation, nearly 80% of wheat in Nanyang has unsound kernels exceeding the standard, wheat quality in southern areas such as Runan and Pingyu in Zhumadian is generally low, and basically all wheat in Xinyang fails to meet the minimum purchase price procurement standard. Wheat quality failing to meet the national procurement standard has led to the current predicament in which “difficulty in selling grain” and “difficulty in purchasing grain” coexist. As of July 19, Henan Province had purchased 6.08 million tons of wheat at minimum purchase price, 40% less than the same period last year.
Under the dual problems of difficulty in selling grain and difficulty in purchasing grain, many growers and grain departments are calling on the state to introduce policies to help solve the difficulty in selling grain. Li Jinzhou, section chief of the Supervision Section of the Nanyang Xiangdong Directly Subordinate Depot of China Grain Reserves, said: “Farmers and brokers have limited grain storage conditions. If wheat continues to be backlogged, it will breed insects and mold, and grain losses will become even more serious.” “It truly hurts to see grain grown through such hard work wasted like this. How can this give large-scale grain farmers confidence to continue growing grain?” Peng Zhihe said.
At present, Sinograin Henan Company has introduced color sorters to improve screening and filtering capacity, ensure that all grain that should be purchased is purchased, and reduce farmers' losses. It is also trying to help farmers establish purchase and sales relationships with processing enterprises to increase market-based procurement volume.