Carrots Sell at Low Prices with No Buyers in Guanghan, Sichuan, Making It Hard for Farmers to Earn Money

　　Original title:10 Million Jin of Carrots Unsold in Sichuan; Analyst: Information Is Not Flowing Smoothly

　　According to a report by China National Radio's "Sannong China," as the saying goes: carrots, honey-sweet, and before you know it, the New Year is here. Right now is the season when carrots hit the market in large quantities. Analysts have told us that this autumn's carrot crop has reversed the hard-to-sell situation of the spring crop, with prices rising and sales doing well too.

But right now, some villagers in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, are worried: recently, there have been far too few carrot buyers, and the prices offered are very low. The village's more than 1,300 mu of land, producing about 10 million jin of carrots, simply cannot be sold. Why is it that, amid a booming national carrot market, the carrots here are going unsold?

After working all morning in the fields, the couple Huang Bangmin, villagers of Chuanjiang Village, Lianshan Town, Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, had pulled several hundred jin of fresh carrots. The quality was good, and the buyer offered 5 mao 5 fen per jin, which, compared with the 2 or 3 mao per jin offered elsewhere, was already a high price. These few baskets of carrots sold for a total of 185 yuan, but Old Huang could not bring himself to feel happy at all.

Huang Bangmin: They just don't sell well.

Reporter: But the yield is very good?

Huang Bangmin: The yield is fine, the radishes are good, it's just that the buyers' trucks don't come.

Group 2 of Chuanjiang Village, where Huang Bangmin lives, is right next to the Yazi River. This large stretch of riverbank land was formed over many years by alluvial deposits from the river, and the soil is loose and fertile. For generations, the local people have had a tradition of growing carrots. Huang Bangmin told the reporter that turning the carrots in the fields into cash is the income the villagers most long for before the New Year.

Huang Bangyun: They're delicious, they have a sweet aftertaste. If you say they can't be sold, then the loss is even greater, definitely a much bigger loss. Come the New Year, when other people are cutting cured meat, we won't even have the money to buy meat.

Huang Bangyun did the accounts for the reporter: this year he planted more than 10 mu of carrots, with a yield of 6,000 to 7,000 jin per mu. Calculating at his previous highest selling price of 1 yuan per jin, his income could reach 60,000 to 70,000 yuan, but this year's average purchase price of less than 4 mao has directly halved his income.

Huang Bangyun: They have to sell for at least 8 mao per jin for farmers to make any profit. Selling at 3 or 4 mao, or 2 or 3 mao per jin, is purely no profit at all, absolutely no profit. If they sold for 8 mao per jin, the farmers would be delighted.

Chuanjiang Village has villagers from 4 groups, with a carrot planting area of more than 1,300 mu. The villagers say this year's carrot harvest is bumper, with total output estimated at 10 million jin. But only a handful of buyers come each day, and the purchase price has plunged sharply. Buyer Zeng Deqing:

Zeng Deqing: No, they still haven't sold.

Reporter: Did the carrot buyers come to look?

Zeng Deqing: The buyer looked and said these carrots are a bit poor in quality, so the price is probably around 3 mao and some, about 3 mao per jin.

So is it the case that carrots are going unsold nationwide? According to Bian Tingting, an analyst at Zhuochuang Information, the national autumn carrot market is currently doing well. This year's spring carrots did indeed face a relatively unsold situation, but autumn-produced carrots, because output has declined in some areas, are currently selling well, and prices at the production areas are also on the high side.

Bian Tingting: At present, the overall national carrot market is doing well. Taking Sunying Township, Tongxu County, Kaifeng, Henan, as an example, the purchase price for ordinary-grade carrots is 0.5 to 0.6 yuan per jin, while the price for premium-grade carrots is 1.0 to 1.1 yuan per jin. Prices have risen by at least half compared with the same period last year. Cold-storage buyers are now highly motivated to purchase, creating a situation where the overall carrot market is on the favorable side.

With the national autumn carrot market in such great shape, why are Guanghan's carrots in Sichuan so hard to sell? According to local buyer Qin Wenji, in recent times carrots from elsewhere came onto the market first and took up a large share of the local Guanghan market. Now, the local carrots they buy can only be sold entirely to other places. Only once the weather turns cold and temperatures drop can local carrot prices be expected to recover.

Qin Wenji: It has to do with this year's weather. By this time last year, there had already been several frosts. Given last year's market, prices were at least 8 or 9 mao. This year the weather is too warm. If there were another two or three frosts and it got cold, the price would naturally rise.

Analyst Bian Tingting believes the reason this unsold situation has occurred in the Guanghan area of Sichuan is still poor information flow: many traders do not even know that this production area has carrots. She suggests that while strengthening online promotion, the local area can also connect with the government and relevant enterprises to broaden the sales channels for carrots.