Agricultural products hit by unsalable surpluses year after year: the bigger the harvest, the heavier the loss

Recently, unsold watermelons have appeared in many places across the country, and melon farmers have found themselves in the awkward predicament of “the bigger the harvest, the heavier the loss.” In the face of the strange cycle of unsalable agricultural products that appears year after year, apart from complaining about unfavorable weather, what exactly are the root causes of the “unsalable-surplus disease”? Toiling hard yet struggling to recover costs, who will protect the interests of farmers?

Current situation: Midsummer brings unsold watermelons in many places

⟦NL> Since entering June, Dangshan, a major fruit county in Anhui, has suffered a large-scale watermelon glut. This year, due to consecutive rainy weather, watermelon sales to other regions were affected, and 200,000 mu of watermelons in Dangshan are struggling to find buyers. After watermelons came onto the market in concentrated volumes at the end of May, melon prices repeatedly plummeted, with purchase prices falling from more than 1 yuan per jin in the same period last year to two or three mao per jin.

Watermelons that are large and crisp-sweet are left rotting in the fields and thrown by the roadside, and the farmers' painstaking cultivation faces the awkward reality that “the bigger the harvest, the heavier the loss.”

In fact, it is not only in Dangshan, Anhui. Since the start of summer this year, the “hard-to-sell melons” problem has appeared in many places across the country at almost the same time.

Entering “unsold watermelons” into an online search engine, since May the phenomenon of unsold watermelons publicly reported by the media has appeared in Guangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning and many other places. As a seasonal summer fruit, watermelons have frequently encountered unsold surpluses nationwide from south to north.

It is not only watermelons that have suffered large-scale unsold surpluses. Recently, many media outlets reported in a concentrated way on the news that “fruit farmers in Shaanxi dumped nectarines.”

Lanmeiyuan Village in Zhuyu Town, Zhouzhi County, Shaanxi, is a well-known nectarine production base. Almost every household in the village grows nectarine trees, and nectarines are also the main source of income for the fruit farmers. But this year, when the nectarines ripened, few buyers came to purchase them, and the price was less than one-third of previous years. With no other choice, the fruit farmers dumped the unsold nectarines into the river at the head of the village.

From a longer time span, in March this year, nearly one million jin of tribute pears went unsold in Liquan County, Shaanxi; in April, Cangnan in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, one of the country's main tomato-producing areas, suffered a large-scale tomato glut; in May, Changfeng, Anhui, suffered a strawberry glut, with losses across the county exceeding 150 million yuan; in the same month, one million jin of bayberries went unsold in Nan'an, Fujian……

In recent years, unsold agricultural products seem to have become a chronic, difficult problem that appears year after year. On one side, farmers with a “bumper yield” wear worried expressions, with not the slightest joy of a “bumper harvest”; on the other side, urban residents complain that the fruits and vegetables in the markets around them are too expensive, and the strange cycle of “farmers struggle to sell, city dwellers buy expensively” is hard to break.

Exploring causes: What are the root causes of the “unsalable-surplus disease”?

In response to the recent phenomenon of unsold watermelons in many places, some industry insiders analyzed that the difficulty in selling watermelons this year was mainly due to lower spring temperatures in the south this year, which caused watermelons in Hainan, Guangxi and other places to mature later, close to the time when watermelons in Anhui and Shandong came onto the market. Watermelons from multiple places flooded the market at once, causing supply to exceed demand. In addition, since May, rainy weather has been widespread nationwide, especially in Northeast China, and with cooler weather, consumers' demand for watermelons decreased.

However, for the problem of unsold agricultural products that appears almost every year, apart from “the weather not being kind,” what deeper reasons lie behind the frequent incidents of “cheap fruit hurting farmers”?

In recent years, among the ways of solving unsold agricultural products, emergency measures by government departments, media promotion, and the spread of goodwill by netizens on new media such as Weibo and WeChat have become effective channels for solving the problem. But in the long run, what is the fundamental way to eradicate the strange cycle of unsold agricultural products?

“The causes of unsold agricultural products are diverse. Direct causes include ‘seasonal concentrated market entry of agricultural products and market oversupply,’ ‘frequent price fluctuations of agricultural products, with asymmetric production and sales information leading to follow-the-crowd planting,’ ‘single varieties of fruits and vegetables and low quality leading to low market competitiveness,’ and so on.” Li Yiping, a professor at the School of Economics of Renmin University of China, analyzed in an interview with China News Service.

Experts analyze that in developed countries where agricultural production is highly specialized and large-scale, unsold agricultural products occur less frequently, while China's current scattered, household-by-household production and operation model easily creates the strange cycle of agricultural products being “unsold, hard to sell, and expensive to buy.”

Li Yiping said that agricultural product prices fluctuate frequently and the cycles are relatively short. When the price of a certain fruit or vegetable rises rapidly, small and scattered farmers expand their planting scale to chase high prices, and the crops they plant become similar. Coupled with blocked information and misjudgment of market conditions, this sows hidden dangers for unsold products and falling prices.

As the expert said, because farmers operate in a scattered way, the agricultural product market cannot accurately predict output or provide effective market information to guide farmers' planting. This makes uncertainty in the supply and demand of agricultural products a normal state, and unsold agricultural products therefore occur frequently.

Also rooted in household-by-household scattered operation, the disadvantaged position in the market has always made it very difficult for farmers to gain a say over prices.

“There are too many intermediate circulation links for agricultural products. From the fields in the countryside to the vegetable markets in the city, middlemen add markups layer by layer. On the one hand, this squeezes farmers' interests; on the other hand, city residents also cannot eat inexpensive fruits and vegetables.” Li Yiping said.

Breaking the problem: Who will solve farmers' “unsold emergency”?

In recent years, in order to solve the “unsold emergency” encountered by farmers, government departments have mostly used emergency measures such as urgently contacting buyers and issuing documents to clear circulation channels to relieve the immediate crisis. Some places have even produced “odd moves” such as mayors peddling goods on the street and putting up plaques to establish a “Watermelon Office.”

Recently, in Jiange County, Sichuan, because a breeding enterprise's free-range chickens went unsold and its capital chain broke, every employee in the county's administrative and public institutions was required to buy 20 chickens, at 60 yuan each regardless of size. The task, totaling 1,200 yuan, was deducted in one lump sum from year-end performance pay. This practice of using administrative means to “apportion” unsold agricultural products has also drawn public questioning.

“In the face of unsold agricultural products, the government can neither be absent nor overstep its role. Problems that originate in the market must be solved by market means. What the government should do is play a ‘service’ role, not a ‘command’ role.” Li Yiping said.

Li Yiping said that in some places, characteristic agricultural parks are blindly built in a concentrated way. Without carefully analyzing the market, farmers are encouraged or even forced to expand planting areas, leading to excess supply. These are all negative examples of administrative intervention in the production and sale of agricultural products.

“On the issue of unsold agricultural products, government departments certainly cannot stand by with folded arms. The government should build supply-and-marketing information platforms, reduce intermediate links, and guide farmers to connect with the market.” Li Yiping said.

Experts analyze that now, strengthening the release of agricultural product market information through internet platforms and building e-commerce platforms to broaden sales channels for agricultural products have become a trend. However, in China's rural areas amid the current urbanization process, the population structure is mostly “the old and the young,” so the informatization process of agriculture requires more government services.

In addition, policies such as taxation and insurance, as well as more measures to streamline administration and delegate power, can “clear obstacles” to reduce intermediate links in the production and sale of agricultural products, and ensure the interests of growers in every link of production, circulation, and sales. This is also where the government needs to act.

From a long-term perspective, in public opinion's “diagnosis and pulse-taking” of the strange cycle of unsold agricultural products, integrating the current smallholder economy into a market-oriented enterprise economy and industrial economy as soon as possible and enhancing risk resistance seems to have become the “fundamental cure” for breaking the problem. However, escaping the household-by-household scattered operation model and improving the scale and specialization of agriculture still require profound changes in China's rural economy.