The financial crisis has hurt Gansu fruit farmers: Apples cost 8 cents per catty, no one cares about it, it’s true

No one cares about apples costing 8 cents per catty

On the afternoon of November 2, Li Diaolai, a 52-year-old fruit farmer from Mapo Village, Gangou Township, Jingning County, was sitting in his 5-acre orchard, sorting through piles of apples. Li Diaolai told reporters helplessly that at this time last year, all his apples were sold out, but for some reason this year, no fruit dealer has come to his orchard to buy apples for a month. He was anxious, so he asked around about the price of fruit. It turned out that apples were getting cheaper day by day, and he became more and more panicked day by day. If the apples cannot be sold, only one-third of the apples can be stored in his cellar. And two-thirds of the apples have nowhere to store, and they can only watch these apples being frozen as the weather gets colder.

Li Diaolai told reporters heartbrokenly that in the past two days, the bad news about apples costing 8 cents per pound reached his ears. At first he couldn't accept it, but later he couldn't bear it when he saw the mountains of apples. Without selling any apples, he made up his mind and planned to sell some of the apples for 8 cents per catty. Unexpectedly, after a few days, even at such a low price, no fruit seller came to buy them.

Li Diaolai smiled when he mentioned last year’s apple sales. He said that in September last year, his apples were still growing on the trees, and fruit sellers had already come to order apples. 75 (Unit of diameter of apples, millimeters) Apples cost 3 yuan per catty, 70 apples cost 2.5 yuan per catty, 65 apples cost 2 yuan per catty, even the bad second-hand apples cost 80 cents per catty and were snapped up by juice factories. . But this year, not to mention that no one came to "rush" to buy his sub-apples, even the 70-year-old apples cost 1.5 yuan per catty, and no one cared.

The reporter then visited the orchards in Chengguan Township and Weirong Township of Jingning County and saw that due to many natural disasters this year, hail left special marks on Jingning apples. Although the beaten apples were sweet, It's delicious and the flesh is tight, but the "face" of the apple has scars, and fruit sellers stop when they hear the "scar". But Yang Zhihong, a fruit farmer in Weirong Township, has a different view. He said that it is understandable that no one wants apples with scars caused by natural disasters, but no one wants good apples without scars. He really doesn't know what's going on with the apple market.

Apples are unsaleable due to interruption of sales channels

Zhang Zhong, a fruit dealer who has been buying apples in Jingning all year round, believes that since most of the foreign businessmen buying Jingning apples are Sichuan fruit dealers, since the Wenchuan earthquake Later, few Sichuan fruit vendors came to Jingning to order apples this year. The sudden interruption of this export apple road directly affected the sales of Jingning apples.

The reporter learned that 30% of the apples produced in Jingning’s nearly one million acres of apple orchards are sold domestically and 70% are exported, but this year’s export channels are not optimistic. Li Yulin, a fruit broker, told reporters that the credit crisis in the United States is also an important reason affecting Jingning apple sales. Now, fruit sellers like them are "standing still" and watching economic news on TV every day. They are afraid that the apples purchased at "low prices" will suddenly drop in price before they are sold, so they dare not buy large quantities of apples.

As for Apple’s purchase price this year, Li Yulin told reporters that Apple’s purchase price is on average more than half lower than last year. Among them, the price of inferior apples has dropped even more seriously. Last year, the worst apples were all sold for 8 cents per catty by fruit sellers. This year, no one wants the apples that are not too bad and cost 8 cents per catty.

The impact of the financial crisis

On the morning of November 3, the reporter interviewed Wang Zhuanwa, director of the Jingning County Fruit Bureau, about the sales of Jingning apples. He told reporters that the poor sales of Jingning Apple were due to the impact of the financial crisis. Currently, all domestic apple export ports are closed, while 60% to 70% of Jingning apples are exported. Now, no export company is willing to buy apples. All 230,000 tons of apples in Jingning are backlogged, directly causing Jingning apples to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.

Director Wang Zhuanwa told reporters that in order to minimize the losses of fruit farmers, the Fruit Bureau adopted a method of bundling sales between companies and fruit farmers, that is, mobilizing large companies with the ability to store apples to temporarily sell the fruit farmers’ apples. Store the apples, and after the farmers sell the apples, the company charges a certain storage management fee, and the farmers take away the sales price. This method can solve the current large backlog of apples.

Text/Photo by our reporter Yuan Ying