The Truth Behind the Fake Pitaya "Unsalable" Crisis: Three Ways to Tell Real from Fake
After grabbing the attention of countless Chinese people in early July, the “unsalable” pitaya in Foshan, Guangdong was still confirmed by the public to be fake news.
In this “crying wolf” incident involving agricultural products, those hurt were not only outsiders concerned about China's agriculture, rural areas and farmers, but also the fruit growers caught in the whirlpool of the fake “unsalable” story——while “Foshan pitaya” attracted more buyers, it also led some buyers to maliciously drive down prices, with some quotes falling as low as two yuan per jin. Fake news nearly turned into a real unsalable crisis. Stories of agricultural products “crying wolf” like this must never be repeated, otherwise the ones who will be “hurt the most” will still be the vast number of farmers.
Yimutian origin specialist reveals the truth behind “unsalable”
⟦NL> “I'm busy as can be right now, no time to talk to you, come and see for yourselves!” On the evening of the 4th, Boss Hu of Yonghengfeng Pitaya Farm in Datang Town, Sanshui District, Foshan City, hurriedly hung up the phone. With questions in mind, Yimutian origin staff from Gaozhou City, Guangdong immediately took a car to the production area 400 kilometers away to learn about the actual situation.
According to Wen Chunlei, the Yimutian staff member who was the first to arrive at the production area, he received confirmed information at 4:30 p.m. on July 4 that the locally circulated online phenomenon of “Foshan pitaya unsalable” had not occurred, and that “thousands of jin of pitaya dumped into fish ponds” was merely the routine disposal method for non-commercial fruit that could not be sold due to quality problems.
Yongping Village in Datang Town has a total of 500 mu planted with pitaya, and Yonghengfeng Pitaya Farm accounts for 60% of the village's planted area. Boss Hu's 300 mu of pitaya is mainly the “Taiwan red flesh” variety, brought to market in batches according to ripening order, with one batch every 7 to 10 days on average, each batch 120,000 to 150,000 jin, and out of every 100,000 jin at least about 1,000 jin of poor-looking defective fruit needs to be disposed of. “Those with fish ponds at home dump them into the ponds to feed the fish, those without let them rot in the fields. The reporter just captured a portion of the defective fruit being dumped into a fish pond and then wildly reported it as ‘unsalable.’”
“Boss Hu is especially busy, too busy to even talk; many buyers come to purchase, and I saw a whole busload of people get off to buy.” Wen Chunlei said. As of now, Boss Hu's third batch of pitaya is basically sold out, at about 3 yuan per jin.
In fact, it was not until the evening of July 4, when some media exposed “Fake! Guangdong pitaya not unsalable; dumping into fish ponds was defective fruit, no need to make a fuss,” that the momentum of the fake “Foshan pitaya unsalable” news, which had spread wildly online for 4 days, gradually weakened, and Foshan pitaya was finally “cleared” in the face of the truth.
Terminal consumer markets such as Beijing still see firm prices
According to data provided by Yimutian, China's largest agricultural e-commerce platform, since the start of summer, the national wholesale price of pitaya has shown an overall downward trend. The pitaya price of 4.85 yuan/jin on June 9 continued to decline, and as of July 5, the national average wholesale price of pitaya dropped to 4.51 yuan/jin. For Guangdong Province, where pitaya cultivation scale reaches 180,000 mu, the average market wholesale price was even as low as 4 yuan/jin.
In recent years, the pitaya planting area in Guangdong, Yunnan, Guangxi and other provinces has increased, and this year's climate was suitable, so the per-unit yield in pitaya production areas also increased compared with last year. However, because high-grade red-flesh pitaya is the main planted variety, the pricing of the main pitaya varieties is relatively high, and coupled with rising costs for labor and transportation, this pushed up pitaya prices overall, preventing prices from falling below the national average market price. At the same time, in large supermarkets in first-tier Chinese cities such as Beijing and Guangdong, the price of high-quality pitaya basically remained above 5 yuan per jin, which can be called firm, and supply was relatively ample.
Industry experts disclosed that due to the diversity of consumer choices and the openness of the market, of the national annual consumption of 6 million tons of pitaya, 83% is occupied by Vietnamese pitaya at low prices, which has impacted the sales market for pitaya from domestic production areas. In addition, a large amount of pitaya recently came onto the market in a concentrated period, and consumption was sluggish, so buyers mostly took a wait-and-see attitude and did not dare to move goods in large quantities, causing Guangdong pitaya purchase prices to fall all the way. At Yonghengfeng Pitaya Farm in Datang Town, Foshan City, from the start of ripening and marketing in late June to now, the third batch is basically sold out, and red-flesh pitaya dropped from 7 yuan/jin at the beginning of marketing to 2 to 3 yuan/jin.
Three channels teach people to distinguish true from fake “unsalable”
Watermelon, nectarine, lychee, apricot……since late June, there have been multiple cases of unsalable agricultural products in China. After media exposure, Yimutian origin specialists rushed to the production areas to connect supply and demand, reducing large losses for farmers. However, after this Foshan pitaya “unsalable” incident was exposed, many buyers who rushed over upon hearing the news to help felt they had been “played.”
Regarding the misjudgment phenomenon in public opinion, industry insiders are also reflecting: how can the public distinguish true from fake unsalable information? “Even if the market price of a certain agricultural product declines, it does not necessarily mean the market has collapsed or that it is unsalable. Unsalable situations form for reasons, and everyone should learn to use public data to distinguish the authenticity of unsalable information.”
Gao Xinxin, a market analyst at Yimutian, said that a real unsalable event generally needs to meet three major conditions: the first condition is that because the supply of a certain agricultural product in the region far exceeds demand, transactions become extremely difficult for a time. In contrast, in this pitaya “unsalable” case, even if the “unsalable” weight reported by the media was 100,000 jin and the appearance was poor, it could still be shipped in large quantities at 3 yuan per jin, enough to overturn the unsalable “fact” mentioned by the media.
The second condition is that the quoted price is clearly below cost. For example, Boss Hu in Foshan grows red-flesh pitaya with an average yield of only about 4,000 jin per mu, and the cost per mu for pesticides, fertilizer, labor, land rent and so on is roughly 6,000-7,000 yuan. At this point, as long as the selling price is not lower than 1.5 yuan, there will be no loss; even if poor-looking defective fruit is sold at 2 yuan/jin, the fruit grower can still ensure a certain profit, and there is basically no “losing money” problem.
The third condition is that it is difficult for farmers to recover their funds. If they cannot sell at a price above cost, farmers cannot recover their funds in full, and thus cannot form capital turnover, making simple reproduction very difficult to achieve. Only a truly unsalable situation will have such resultant characteristics.
In fact, if the public wants to learn real information about unsalable agricultural products in a timely manner, they can fully use internet big data to search——the most authoritative agricultural product big data platform in China, “Shennongtu,” can compile unsalable information based on real-time national transaction records, and real unsalable information will be displayed on this electronic map at the first opportunity. This kind of agricultural product e-commerce operation allows buyers and suppliers to intuitively understand unsalable situations in various places, and then make optimal decisions.
Relying on the above powerful technological means and trading experience, Yimutian calls on all sectors of society to rationally and objectively distinguish information about unsalable agricultural products, so that the internet and media can become positive energy helping farmers solve unsalable agricultural products, and put an end to “crying wolf” incidents that harm farmers from recurring in the agricultural product circulation market.