Is growing Dendrobium profitable? Latest benefit analysis
Dendrobium, also known as Wanzhangxu, diaolan, linlan, jinsheng, jinchaihua and so on, is a valuable medicinal plant with the effects of benefiting the stomach and promoting fluid production, nourishing yin and clearing heat. It is mostly used for conditions such as yin damage and fluid depletion, dry mouth and excessive thirst, poor appetite and dry retching, post-illness deficiency heat, and blurred vision. With the depletion of wild resources, it is now mostly cultivated artificially. Let us take a look below at whether growing Dendrobium in 2016 is profitable or not!
Is growing Dendrobium profitable?
Because Dendrobium has a slow growth cycle, harsh growing conditions and an extremely low reproduction rate, in recent years, affected by market demand, people have dug it up in unlimited large quantities, and Dendrobium officinale has been on the verge of extinction. This has caused the price of Dendrobium officinale to keep soaring. The fresh product price already rose from 600 yuan per kg in 2010 to 1,500 yuan per kg in 2012, more than doubling. Its first-grade dried product Fengdou had already exceeded 20,000 yuan per kg in 2013. With continuous breakthroughs in agricultural technology, the application of tissue culture technology and artificial cultivation technology has enabled the Dendrobium officinale industry to develop rapidly. The current national planting area has exceeded 2,000 hectares. It is cultivated in Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Fujian, Jiangsu and Sichuan, with an output value exceeding 3 billion yuan, making it one of the Chinese medicinal materials with the largest production and sales volume and the fastest development in our country.
Market prospects of Dendrobium
At present, the total annual demand of the entire Dendrobium market is 8,000 to 10,000 tons, and demand is increasing by 10 to 15% each year. However, artificial cultivation has just started, and supply is seriously insufficient. It is expected that within 10 years the output of Dendrobium will still be difficult to meet market demand. At present, the price of premium pure Dendrobium is around 100,000 yuan per kg. The price of first-grade Dendrobium is 20,000 to 30,000 yuan per kg, and there is a price but no goods. The state also strongly supports growing Dendrobium. The National Science and Technology Commission has listed the artificial cultivation and research and development project of Dendrobium as a national-level Spark Program project. For individuals and enterprises artificially cultivating and researching Dendrobium, the National Science and Technology Commission has clearly stated that it will approve project establishment and provide government funding support.
Risks of growing Dendrobium
1. Technical difficulty is very high: although after more than 10 years of research and exploration, the artificial cultivation technology for Dendrobium is basically mature. However, it is still very difficult for ordinary people to master proficient cultivation techniques in a short period. At present, cultivation techniques vary greatly from place to place, and product quality and benefits also differ greatly, with cultivation failures occurring from time to time.
2. Large investment and high risk: calculated according to an actual effective planting area of 400 sq m per mu under intensive greenhouse cultivation, each mu requires 30,000 to 50,000 seedlings. Calculated at the current 2.5 yuan per cluster, the seedling investment requires more than 80,000 yuan. Adding the cost of facilities such as greenhouses, as well as 2 years of labor and management costs, the investment per mu exceeds 100,000 yuan. Once cultivation fails, the loss is severe, and such examples have appeared many times.
3. The cultivation cycle is relatively long: from tissue culture to acclimatization of bottle seedlings takes about 15 months. In Dehong and other places in Yunnan with relatively high temperatures, it takes 15 to 18 months for preliminary harvest, while in some areas with lower temperatures the harvest period requires 18 to 30 months.
4. Quality is difficult to guarantee: our country currently has as many as 76 Dendrobium varieties. Dendrobium alone also has several seedlings of different quality, such as hybrid species, place-of-origin species, soft-stem species and hard-stem species, which are difficult even for ordinary professionals to distinguish. In addition, factors such as substrate selection, planting mode, fertilization and pest and disease control will all affect the quality of Dendrobium. If the technology is not well mastered, the quality of the cultivated product will be poor, and pesticide residues, heavy metals and other substances will exceed standards, generally making it very difficult to sell.
5. Follow the principle of genuine origin: although all are Dendrobium, quality differs greatly because of different growing places. At the current initial stage of the industry, consumers do not yet attach much importance to the place of origin. With the expansion of the market, the principle of genuine origin will be taken seriously, and Dendrobium artificially grown in greenhouses in some places unsuitable for cultivation will lose the market because of quality and other reasons.
6. Market fluctuations are too large: because enterprises in Zhejiang, Guangdong and other places participate, the one-time planting area is large, and combined with the impact of greenhouse cultivation quality, genuine origin and many other factors, the Dendrobium market is unstable, and later benefits are difficult to predict.