How much is chili pepper per jin? Prices have risen to a new high for the same period in recent years
Original title: Chili pepper prices have surged to a new high for the same period in recent years.
Recently, "garlic you ruthless" and "ginger you army" have made a comeback. Right now, the winter favorite red chili pepper is also stealing the show, with prices rising straight up and breaking new highs for the same period in recent years. It is fair to say the chili pepper market has gone scorching hot.
Looking at the market trends of recent years, everyone will find that the chili pepper market always shows wild surges and crashes. So how long will this round of chili pepper price surges last? With chili pepper prices rising now, are growers and distributors making money?
Sister Wang from Huangshi, Hubei, went to the vegetable market to buy groceries these past two days and found that chili peppers were very expensive.
Vendor: This chili pepper is one yuan and two jiao.
Sister Wang: This one chili pepper costs one yuan and two jiao? That is so expensive. Can it even be used for cooking?
Vendor: Of course. This one chili pepper is enough to stir-fry with meat for a dish.
What Sister Wang bought was thick-skinned chili pepper, and the price increase was beyond what she had expected. Li Tao, an analyst at the Anhui Baida Zhougudui Agricultural Products Wholesale Market, said that this year chili pepper prices are different from previous years.
Li Tao: According to past convention, after November, vegetable prices enter a relatively cheap stage, but this year the seasonal decline in vegetable prices is not obvious, and they continue to stay at a high level. In particular, the prices of solanaceous fruits represented by green peppers are more than 30% higher than the same period last year.
According to statistics from Zhuochuang Information, in Shandong, a major chili pepper producing province, the purchase price of good-quality Sanjiao peppers is 7.10-7.15 yuan/jin, up 2.0 yuan/jin from the listing period, an increase of 40%, and up 60% compared with the average price for the same period. In other regions, such as Tongliao in Inner Mongolia, Anhui, and Hubei, chili peppers of varieties such as green peppers, dried peppers, thin-skinned peppers, and thick-skinned peppers have also seen large increases. Cui Xiaona, an analyst at Zhuochuang Information, believes that the reason for the current sharp rise in chili peppers is the impact of earlier weather.
Cui Xiaona: The main reason lies in an imbalance in supply. On the one hand, affected by earlier rainfall and high temperatures, chili pepper output fell sharply. On the other hand, the quality of chili peppers was seriously affected, and good-quality supply is tight. Because many large distributors anticipated this year's chili pepper production reduction, they rushed to stockpile and were relatively active in purchasing, which led to the straight-line rise in chili pepper prices.
Li Tao, an analyst at the Anhui Baida Zhougudui Agricultural Products Wholesale Market, believes that chili pepper prices are currently maintaining a high level, and this high level will be relatively stable. Even if they fall in the future, the lost ground will be made up in December.
Li Tao: It is expected that in the near term, green pepper prices will remain stable and may decline slightly later. But after entering December, it will mainly depend on weather changes, and there may still be room for a rebound.
A sharp rise in chili peppers is not good news for consumers, but have chili pepper growers and distributors made money? During interviews, reporters found that because prices are high, consumption is low, and distributors have difficulty moving volume. Also, because wholesale prices are high, distributors must raise prices, which creates the awkward situation in which chili peppers are hard to sell.
Analyst Li Tao believes that, judging from the situation in recent years, the prices of vegetables such as chili peppers are greatly affected by climate. Climate disasters are common, and year-on-year changes in agricultural product prices are more obvious. To ensure the stability of agricultural product prices, work needs to be done in two aspects.
Li Tao: On the one hand, insurance should still be increased, and farmers should be encouraged to take out agricultural insurance. On the other hand, farmers should be encouraged to engage in large-scale operations to improve their ability to withstand climate disasters. For example, with scale, they can build greenhouses, and protected cultivation can improve their ability to resist risks. Although vegetable prices are very high now, farmers have not truly benefited, and consumers have also spent a lot of money. To a large extent this is caused by climate, and more should be done in this area to stimulate growers' enthusiasm.
In addition, chili pepper prices are also affected by supply and demand. Tan Yingchao, chairman of Zhongjiao Yingchao Spicy Industry Development Co., Ltd., said that growers must understand changes in the chili pepper market in order to control the overall planting area.
Tan Yingchao: I think everyone is making predictions, but I do not see many who truly go to the fields and truly go to the market to grasp the real current data. Everyone roughly estimates how many chili peppers this producing area has and how large the planting area is, but there is no specific data.
Cui Xiaona, an analyst at Zhuochuang Information, believes that the crashes and surges in chili peppers still hurt growers and distributors, and reversing this situation requires the joint efforts of growers and relevant departments.
Cui Xiaona: In recent years, chili peppers, along with garlic, ginger, apples, and others, have become investment products for wealthy bosses. The main factor behind large price rises and falls is excessive supply elasticity. When prices are relatively high this year, ordinary people increase the planting area without limit; when prices are relatively low, they sharply reduce planting. If this strange cycle is to be fundamentally broken, the planting area needs to be kept within a reasonable range. Now that all kinds of information spread quickly, growers can also follow changes in the chili pepper market through television, the internet, and other means. In years when prices are too high, they should not rashly increase planting the next year, and when prices are too low, they should not sharply reduce planting. They can rotate several agricultural products in cultivation. In addition, relevant local government departments can also guide farmers in special market years on what to plant, how much to plant, and how to plant it.