In recent times, the prices of both meat and vegetables in mainland China have been running at high levels and have continued to climb, making many people feel that their vegetable baskets are sinking. Some vendors said that since mid-December last year, vegetable prices have been on a rising mode. After New Year’s Day, it is climbing, almost a day a price.
According to mainland media reports, on January 9, interviewed a traditional market in Weifang City, Shandong Province, each stall is surrounded by many people asking about the price of vegetables. Various vegetable prices are not cheap, just buy a few vegetables, it will cost several dozen yuan.
Some vendors said that recently the price of vegetables has risen very strongly, almost a price a day, many vegetable prices have almost doubled. Especially after New Year’s Day this year, all kinds of vegetable prices have risen in varying degrees. Although vegetable prices rise every winter, but this year, the increase is greater.
There are many shoppers in the vegetable section of a local supermarket, and most of them stare at the price list and say that it is somewhat difficult to accept, not expecting the price of vegetables to rise so much. In addition to a small number of relatively affordable vegetables such as potatoes and cabbage, the general price is basically more than 9 yuan (RMB, the same below) per kilogram.
Official monitoring of 28 kinds of vegetable prices of which 25 rose
The Ministry of Agriculture and rural Affairs of the Communist Party of China monitors the prices of 28 kinds of vegetables, and its release of data for January 2021 (as of January 10) shows that the national average wholesale price is 5.44 yuan per kilogram, up 10.8% from the same period in the previous January (YoY) and up 5.2% from the same period in the previous year (YoY). By species, prices rose compared to the previous month there are 25 species, including more than 30% increase in green pepper (36.9%), winter melon (35.6%), cabbage (31.3%).
Kong Fantao, deputy director of the Institute of Specialties of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the end of December 2020 and early January 2021, the country experienced widespread cold weather, bringing adverse effects to late winter and spring vegetable production.
In fact, the cold wave weather before the price of vegetables went up a lot. 28 kinds of vegetables monitored in December 2020, the national average wholesale price of 4.91 yuan per kilogram, up 9.6% YoY and 7.7% YoY.
The data released by the CPC Bureau of Statistics on January 11 showed that the prices of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, pork and mutton, eggs, etc. have increased recently, and the national CPI (consumer price index) turned from down to up in December last year.
Epidemic, strong cold weather and other factors pull up vegetable prices
Some analysis said that some vegetable prices continue to rise, in addition to the normal seasonal fluctuations, the unusual cold weather is extremely unfavorable to the growth of vegetables, and even cold damage can occur, reduced production, the centralized listing period has been delayed, and then there may be poor transit connections.
One more reason is the fragile supply. To onion, for example, since the winter onion prices significantly higher than last year, mainly in 2019 year onion prices are significantly low, coupled with the impact of the epidemic in 2020, many farmers fear that there will be repeated epidemics later, the harvest was met with poor outbound sales, and thus the initiative to reduce the planting area.
The industry from Taiyuan said that there are multiple factors causing local vegetable prices to rise: last year’s epidemic led to a shortage of supply of vegetables in the first quarter; and hailstorms in the second quarter of last year and heavy rains in the third quarter, which also had a negative impact on the production of vegetables; into the fourth quarter after the start of the winter supply mode of vegetables, production and transportation costs have to be adjusted upward.
The industry is worried that now many places in China again outbreak of epidemic, the people to fight the epidemic at the same time to fight the cold, resulting in further contradiction between supply and demand of vegetables, vegetable prices will continue to rise for a while, I’m afraid.
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