Vegetable Supply Increases in October, Prices Fall Year-on-Year
According to monitoring by the Ministry of Agriculture's Vegetable Production Information Network, vegetable supply in October increased both year-on-year and month-on-month. Farm-gate wholesale prices of vegetables fell year-on-year but rose month-on-month. November marks the beginning of the off-season for vegetable production, and vegetable supply is expected to remain basically stable, with prices rising steadily.
In October, vegetable supply increased both year-on-year and month-on-month. Vegetable output at the information monitoring points of 580 key vegetable counties reached 1.11 million tonnes, up 4.1% year-on-year and up 3.6% month-on-month. By region, the pattern showed "four increases and two decreases." Because Xinjiang's large volume of processing peppers was harvested in a concentrated way this month, output in the northern high-latitude summer-autumn vegetable advantage area rose 13.8% year-on-year; output in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau summer-autumn vegetable advantage area rose 12.7% year-on-year, mainly because Guizhou's pepper planting area increased considerably and output rose substantially; output in the Huang-Huai-Hai and Bohai Rim protected vegetable advantage area and the Loess Plateau summer-autumn vegetable advantage area rose 5.6% and 3.8% respectively; output in the Yangtze River Basin winter-spring vegetable advantage area and the South China and Southwest hot-zone winter-spring vegetable advantage area fell 6.5% and 3.9% respectively year-on-year. By variety, among 20 categories of vegetables, 8 categories including head cabbage, cowpea, pepper, common bean, celery, Chinese cabbage, tomato and cauliflower saw output rise more than 3% year-on-year; among them, because Shandong's main producing area increased its planting area and yields per unit area rose, head cabbage output increased markedly; 6 categories including carrot, spinach, radish, zucchini, pak choi and Welsh onion fell more than 3% year-on-year, while output of the remaining categories was basically stable.
In October, farm-gate wholesale prices of vegetables fell year-on-year and continued to rise month-on-month. In October, the average farm-gate wholesale price of vegetables at the information monitoring points of 580 key vegetable counties was 2.96 yuan/kg, down 8.9% year-on-year and up 6.1% month-on-month. The prices for the three ten-day periods were 2.97 yuan/kg, 3.00 yuan/kg and 2.90 yuan/kg respectively. By variety, 16 kinds of vegetables rose more than 10% month-on-month, among which cherry tomato and round eggplant rose the most, up 41.0% and 40.8% respectively; 3 kinds of vegetables fell more than 10% month-on-month, among which pak choi and purple-skinned garlic bulbs fell the most, down 21.5% and 20.5% respectively.
In November, vegetable supply is expected to remain basically stable, with prices rising steadily. According to statistics, at the end of October, the area of vegetables in the field at the information monitoring points of 580 key vegetable counties was 1.32 million mu, up 3.9% year-on-year and down 5.1% month-on-month. Among them, 8 categories including winter melon, tomato, cauliflower, radish, celery, common bean, pepper and Chinese cabbage saw their in-field area at the end of the month rise more than 3% year-on-year, with winter melon and tomato in particular showing relatively large increases in in-field area. Experts analyzed that in November, as temperatures drop, vegetable production enters the off-season; because both the southern vegetable transport bases and the northern protected vegetable area have increased somewhat, total vegetable supply is expected to be stable, but prices will rise somewhat.