Under the sluggish Chinese yam market, growers face a difficult choice: who foots the bill?
Right now is a great time for spring plowing, and also a good time for planting Chinese yam, yet on the Central Plains——Minquan County, Henan Province——a strange sight has appeared: local growers have only just begun harvesting Chinese yam from the fields. Chinese yam should have gone on the market last October, so why has it been dragged out until now?
Beiguan Town in Minquan County is a major Chinese yam planting town. Villager Old Zhao is a major Chinese yam grower. At this very time of spring plowing, Old Zhao's face is covered with worry, and he says:
I've dug up 40,000 jin of goods, and I still haven't gotten in touch with any buyers. It's hard to sell now too; I've just been digging and selling as I go.
In order to make money, Old Zhao put in all his family's savings, and also took out a loan of 100,000 yuan, planting 10 mu of Chinese yam, growing 2 varieties, one is Tiegun Chinese yam, and the other is Jiujinhuang Chinese yam. Last October, the Chinese yam had a bumper harvest, but since then, the Chinese yam market has been poor all along. To wait for the market, Old Zhao never harvested, and the Chinese yam stayed in the field. At current prices, by a preliminary estimate, Old Zhao lost 30,000 yuan on the 10 mu, and he can't repay the loan either. Old Zhao's tragic experience is not an isolated case. In Beiguan Town, besides the Chinese yam planted in the fields, many people's homes are also piled full of Chinese yam. Grower Li Damin:
In our village, the amount of Chinese yam stored at home is quite large. Take Tiegun Chinese yam, in our area, it can sell for below 3.5 yuan, and everyone is losing money.
The purchase price of Chinese yam at its highest could reach 10 yuan per jin, while at present, not to mention the purchase price, the sale price of Chinese yam on the Beijing market is, for Tiegun Chinese yam, around 2 to 3 yuan per jin, and for Jiujinhuang Chinese yam, around 0.9 yuan to 1.5 yuan per jin. Compared with the same period last year, purchase prices have all dropped by about 50%. Grower Li Damin says, according to the local general level, the planting cost of Tiegun Chinese yam is generally around 6,000 yuan per mu, with a yield of around 2,000 jin per mu, and as long as the purchase price is below 3.5 yuan, growers are losing money. It is precisely because they don't want to lose money that many Chinese yam growers chose to drag things out starting last October, chose to wait for the market, and waited all the way until now.
Back then I didn't dare sell, and now even if I want to sell, I can't sell it. I just kept hoping for the price to rise, but the more I sell, the cheaper it gets.
After the Spring Festival, not only did Chinese yam prices fail to rise, but the buyers who came to purchase were also very few. Chinese yam growers are weeping without tears. Now it is the spring plowing season, and the Chinese yam in the fields must be sold. Can it be sold? And once the land is cleared, will they still plant Chinese yam? This is a very difficult choice. So why has the Chinese yam market hit a trough, with no possibility of a rebound even in the short term? Zhuochuang Info analyst Cui Xiaona believes that too many people are growing Chinese yam right now.
Chinese yam is easy to manage. In earlier years, growing Chinese yam was quite profitable. When the market was good, one mu could earn more than 10,000 yuan, and the economic benefit was higher than that of wheat and corn, which led to explosive growth in Chinese yam planting area in many regions. Chinese yam is also different from radishes and cabbages; market consumption is not that large, so a situation of supply exceeding demand has appeared.
Lü Aiqin is also a major Chinese yam grower, and he is also very worried, but he has a cold storage. Lü Aiqin's cold storage holds 200,000 jin of Chinese yam. He has 2 cold storages like this, and the current inventory is 400,000 jin.
After being stored for 3 to 5 months, it is just as fresh as what is newly dug from the field. Take me, I have my own storage and can store Chinese yam, but for the ordinary farming folks below, those without storage, even at 2 yuan or 1 yuan per jin, they still have to sell.
Zhuochuang Info analyst Cui Xiaona believes that given the current market, small growers should choose to change direction during spring plowing.
Chinese yam is not making money right now, so small growers should adjust their planting structure and grow some fruits and vegetables, and must not just wait for the market.
For growers with a bit more strength, Cui Xiaona suggests building cold storage. However, the construction cost of cold storage is very high. To reduce costs, a cooperative approach can be adopted.
In fact, when a region plants one variety on a large scale, local growers should be careful. Some farmers with a certain level of strength can look for like-minded friends and, with a forward-looking vision, build a batch of deep-processing and storage equipment and facilities, purchasing and storing when the market is bad, lowering costs, and waiting for the market. In this way, they can not only make money, but also save an industry in a region.
Cui Xiaona says that whether it is Chinese yam or other agricultural products, one unsold case after another tells us that when growing agricultural products, you can't just focus on planting; you also have to think about how to sell after planting. Agricultural products are an industrial chain, including multiple links such as planting, purchasing, storage, processing, and sales. When many people choose to plant, farmers who participate in other links may be able to make big money.