How much does the Chinese medicinal herb leech cost? A brief analysis of price trends

            Leeches are distributed in the wild in lakes and rivers across various regions, mainly produced in Yancheng, Jiangsu, Weishan Lake in Shandong, and Hubei, Henan, Jilin, Heilongjiang and other places. Since the 1980s and 1990s, with economic development, water bodies in various places have become seriously polluted, the living environment of leeches has been damaged, and resources have fallen into crisis, causing leech prices to climb steadily. In recent years, with intensified environmental governance, water quality has improved somewhat, and leech resources have recovered to a certain extent.
 
        Leeches have effects such as treating stroke, high blood pressure, clearing blood stasis, amenorrhea, and traumatic injuries, and are notably effective in preventing and treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. As people's living conditions continue to improve, the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is increasing, and leech sales are also rising.
 
        At present, leeches are running at a medium-to-high price level. Most of the stock pressed in previous years has already been thrown onto the market, a considerable portion sold at break-even, and a small portion waiting for higher prices to arrive. This product has no market manipulators, and its movement is stable. Before the new autumn crop comes in, the risk is temporarily not great. But as time passes and demand rises or falls, the market will also change accordingly.
 
⟧         Over several years, the backlogged inventory of leeches has gradually been digested. After many years of sluggishness, the leech market has revived again, with prices rising year by year. Especially in 2011, leech prices soared, greatly stimulating people's enthusiasm for catching them; large and small ones were caught together, and over-catching intensified once again. In some newly developed production areas, signs of resource depletion appeared in just two or three years. Last spring, prices jumped sharply to more than 70 yuan. After the new spring crop last year, catching in various production areas never stopped, and output increased slightly compared with last year.
 
Leech resources cannot be conserved, and the crisis is intensifying. Wild resources are dwindling day by day, and domestic farming is the general trend. Some media practitioners collect public relations fees to exaggerate the market prospects and economic benefits of leech farming at certain bases, giving leech speculators an opportunity and inducing people to invest blindly.
 
        Judging from the new crop situation of leeches in various production areas, the increase in output last year was only temporary. Due to the decline in wild leech resources, the problem of falling output this year, next year, and the year after will become prominent. The price decline in the leech market is also temporary.
 
       Leech production has several unfavorable factors: first, resources are scattered; second, once caught, resources recover slowly; third, apart from traditional production areas, the value of leeches is not recognized by people, and the production areas are relatively narrow. Traditional production areas include Baiyangdian in Hebei, Hongze Lake in Jiangsu, Jiujiang in Jiangxi, and leeches are also produced in Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei and other places; in recent years, a small-leech production area in Northeast China has also been opened up. The situations in various production areas have similarities, namely that if resources are not developed, the quantity is still acceptable, but once catching begins, resources quickly become depleted. This cannot but be directly related to the leech's poor reproductive capacity and slow growth. This is true of both new and old production areas north and south of the Yangtze River, and also true of the small-leech production area in Northeast China developed in recent years, where resources were depleted in just three to five years.
 
       The development and utilization of leeches seems to have formed a vicious circle: when output falls, prices rise; once prices rise, production areas drain the pond to catch every last one, making output even smaller. Given the current production and sales situation, this vicious circle shows signs of intensifying, and it is only natural that prices continue to rise.