What Are the Prospects for Gastrodia? Market Conditions and Development Potential Analysis

Question: What are the development prospects for Gastrodia?

Answer: This is a question most enquirers care about. Simply put, Gastrodia, as a precious Chinese medicinal herb, has gone from wild harvesting to artificial cultivation, and from a yield of only 3 kg per unit area to more than 20 kg today; overall output has increased several hundredfold, yet the market remains tight. This shows at least three things: First, Gastrodia has moved from purely medicinal use into the ranks of health products, and the development and application market for health products is huge with unlimited potential. The hot sales of Gastrodia tea and Gastrodia drinks have opened up deep-processing channels for Gastrodia and absorbed a large amount of commercial Gastrodia. Second, owing to scientific and technological development in developed countries, applied research on Gastrodia is even more advanced; after China's accession to the WTO, with the disappearance of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, importing Gastrodia from abroad has become more convenient. Third, owing to the special biological characteristics of Gastrodia, such as a long production cycle and high one-time investment, it is simply impossible to greatly increase the production area and Gastrodia output in a short period. As far as the author knows, at present, for those with a cultivation area above 1000 sq m, their products are all exclusively sold by overseas or Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, China buyers; for production above 100 sq m, most already have fixed sales channels; that is to say, for any large-area production, its products simply cannot exert pressure on the existing market; among farmers' scattered cultivation, some have purchase contracts, while a considerable portion is absorbed locally or held for sale at a better price. From the above points, it can be seen that the stability of the Gastrodia market and Gastrodia's relatively good development potential are both natural, and ordinarily human effort cannot reverse the situation.