Bumper Grape Harvest Meets Weak Demand, Sales Under Pressure in Many Parts of the Country
Autumn has arrived, and all across the country it is the good season when grape varieties come onto the market one after another to treat people's taste buds. At this time of year in the past two years, grape growers would smile from ear to ear because of “a bumper harvest and good sales”. This year, however, the nationwide grape market has suffered a Waterloo; in Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu and many other places, there has been “a bumper harvest without good sales”. After a large amount of grapes ripened, there was no market for them; many grapes rotted in the fields because they could not be picked in time, and growers suffered heavy losses.
What exactly is the reason that the once highly profitable grape-growing industry has become a nightmare for growers this year? Is high output necessarily in conflict with high sales?
“In 2010 I went to the Northeast, to the area of southern Liaoning. Their Kyoho grapes had this problem that year. The weather that year was similar to this year; precipitation was expected to be relatively low, so grape output was relatively high, and that year Kyoho grapes were below one yuan per jin……”
This is a recollection by Shang Jiayin, deputy director of the Grape Center of the Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, during an interview with a reporter. That year, grapes in the area of southern Liaoning encountered the awkward situation of low prices and poor sales because of high output. Four years later, this predicament has once again been placed before grape growers.
In Gucheng Village, Yanshi City, Henan Province, Wang Canhui, a young man only 21 years old, quit his job in Shanghai two years ago and returned to his hometown in Henan to contract 40 mu of land with his father and begin growing Kyoho grapes. This year, the carefully tended grapes finally bore fruit for the first time, but what awaited Wang Canhui was the awkwardness of being unable to harvest them.
Wang Canhui: “This is my first year of fruiting here, and the total was more than 30,000 jin. So far I have only sold five or six thousand jin. These past days there have been about seven or eight consecutive days of overcast rain, and more than 20,000 jin of fruit is still in the fields; some has already rotted.”
The grapes just rotted in the fields, leaving growers sighing endlessly and onlookers feeling regretful. According to last year's market, each mu of grapes could bring in about 10,000 yuan. This year, however, Wang Canhui did not make a profit but instead suffered a loss.
Wang Canhui: “From planting until now, I have invested about 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. So far the total income has been only more than 40,000 yuan. Adding in the earlier investment, the total loss is 300,000 to 400,000 yuan.”
According to the reporter's understanding, Wang Canhui's situation is not an isolated case; in many regions across the country, there have been situations of large volumes, poor sales, low prices and harm to farmers. At present, Red Globe grapes in Dunhuang, Gansu, are also deeply mired in this situation. Local agent Yang Wen said that because Shaanxi Red Globe grapes came onto the market at the same time as Gansu Red Globe grapes, they greatly squeezed Dunhuang Red Globe grapes' market share.
Yang Wen: “This year, from coming onto the market on September 5 to now, the price was around 3 yuan at the beginning, and by now it has dropped to 2 yuan. The price cannot hold steady and keeps sliding all the way.”
However, the Shaanxi Red Globe grapes that created competitive pressure for Dunhuang Red Globe grapes did not sell well all the way either. On September 17, People's Daily published an online message titled “Help the growers! 200,000 mu of Red Globe grapes are about to rot”, and what the message referred to was precisely Shaanxi Red Globe grapes.
Because this year's temperature, precipitation and other climatic conditions were suitable for grape growth, many varieties came onto the market at relatively concentrated times, forming an on-year in terms of output. Shang Jiayin, deputy director of the Grape Center of the Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, believes that although poor grape sales are related to expanded planting area, what is more crucial is that the expansion of area has been blind and disorderly.
Shang Jiayin: “I think this is an inevitable result of grapes developing too fast and area increasing too fast. It was caused precisely by disorderly expansion and increases in area and disorderly production in some places in recent years. Seedlings planted in the past two years have only just entered their full-bearing period in these two years, and in recent years the nursery stock market has been increasing, so naturally, this kind of situation has naturally occurred.”
In sharp contrast to the disorderly expansion of planting, this year's market demand has fallen substantially.
Shi Qingcai, an analyst at the Beijing Shuitun Agricultural and Sideline Products Wholesale Market, said: “Affected by the overall environment, purchases by government organs and groups have declined fairly noticeably. So, with supply increasing and consumption decreasing, fruit sales have encountered a little difficulty, and prices are also relatively low.”
The weakness of market demand can be described as adding frost to snow for grape growers. Seeing the grapes ripening one after another, Henan grower Wang Canhui still looked at his 40 mu of grape fields with no way to deal with the situation. The industry prospects he had once favored and the wish to plant more and increase income were gradually extinguished by the consecutive days of rain. Is it true that high output and good sales can only be in conflict? Regarding this, Shang Jiayin does not think so. He told the reporter that the grape market still has broad room for development, and the key is not only to focus on planting, but even more to build supporting links well, solve storage problems and open up sales channels, so as to both guard against meteorological “natural disasters” and resist market “man-made disasters”.
Shang Jiayin: “One solution is to build cold storage for preservation, because grapes are a plant; they cannot wait on the tree for you to pick them, so after picking them, storing them through certain measures can relatively speaking lengthen their market sales time. I think it is still cold storage and some supporting factories, the construction of this kind of thing. Without the support of these projects, these problems may appear every year.”