Why do agricultural products become unsalable? A deep analysis of the main causes

Since the start of summer this year, reports about unsalable agricultural products have once again appeared frequently. From nectarines in a certain northern province to lychees in some southern regions, this should have been a season of bumper harvests, yet farmers were divided between joy and worry.

Apart from natural factors such as severe weather, important human factors are also at play: blindly expanding planting areas creates supply exceeding demand, asymmetric supply and demand information leads to poor distribution channels, limited storage capacity prevents staggered market launches, and insufficient processing capacity makes it difficult to absorb produce locally. Of course, as the link between agricultural products and the market, the role of the government cannot be ignored.

In many places, to promote the development of a certain agricultural specialty industry, grassroots governments emphasize area over quality and pursue scale while neglecting the market, readily building industrial demonstration parks of tens of thousands of mu or industrial demonstration belts of hundreds of thousands of mu. In pursuit of scale, some places are willing to allocate large amounts of fiscal funds to subsidize farmers, even providing "one-stop" subsidies from planting to harvest, so that farmers need only invest labor costs. But scale does not equal industry, and having products does not equal having a market. If farmers lose cost awareness, they also lose risk awareness. For a time, they rush to follow the trend and plant enthusiastically; but when the crops ripen and pile up at the field edges, who will pay the bill becomes a problem.

Under market economy conditions, producers and sellers are the main players, and the government should serve as a good information officer, leveraging its own advantages to analyze and assess market demand information so that growers can plant according to demand; it should also serve as a good liaison, enabling sellers and growers to communicate promptly and without barriers, connecting scattered market resources together. Only when planting is effectively linked with a series of links such as scientific research, sales, transportation, processing and storage can industrial synergy be formed. In addition, the government should also serve as a good service provider, doing good service work for each industrial factor. For example, farmers' professional cooperatives are a natural "matchmaker" between enterprises and farmers. They are both a miniature version of an enterprise and farmers who have initially become enterprise-like. With the same funds, supporting cooperatives may bring stronger market competitiveness than separately subsidizing farmers.

In the final analysis, when it comes to matters such as the planting and sale of agricultural products, the government should do some things and refrain from doing others. It can neither wash its hands of them nor take everything into its own hands. The key is still to act in accordance with market laws.