Behind "cheap fruit hurts farmers", there is still a lack of competitiveness.

With the complete picking and listing of Fuji Apple, the country's main fruit variety, a price game is under way between fruit growers and purchasers, and repeats the phenomenon that fruit farmers hesitated to sell and eventually made it difficult to sell fruit in most areas in the previous two years. Dalian is no exception, the price of some old varieties such as chicken crown in the northern mountain area is even lower than the cost of production management. The phenomenon of "cheap fruit hurting farmers" caused by the difficulty of selling fruit is repeated, in addition to being affected by the increase of various fruits and the general reduction of market purchasing power, the low level of competitiveness of fruit production and sales is also an important factor in the difficulty of selling fruit in some areas.

It is understood that for a long time, apart from the price factor, another important reason for the cherished sale of fruit farmers in our city is the psychological imbalance caused by comparison with the price of apples in Shandong. Many fruit growers do not understand why the price of Dalian apple is always lower than that of Shandong apple. It is understood that for apples of the same specification, there is a maximum difference of nearly two yuan per kilogram between Dalian apples and Shandong apples. For this price gap, many dealers who buy Apple in Dalian and Shandong believe that the price gap is superficial and rooted in the management level and market awareness of fruit growers in the two places.

Although the inherent quality of Dalian apple is not inferior to that of other apple producing areas such as Shandong, the overall management level and market awareness of fruit growers are far lower than those of other producing areas. Almost all apples in Shandong are sold by grade, and apples of the same size are purchased in Shandong that have already been classified by fruit growers, while those purchased in Dalian are mixed fruits of all grades one, two, and three, and the prices are naturally different. As a mature apple production and sales market, Shandong fruit farmers have formed a strong market consciousness for a long time. After picking apples, fruit growers will not only classify them according to their size and specifications according to the requirements of buyers, but also classify them according to the quality of apples, and merchants will bid directly according to different grades. In the apple producing areas of our city, fruit growers basically sell regardless of grade, and some lazy fruit growers do not even divide their specifications, directly hawking them in piles.

The market consciousness of Shandong fruit growers is also reflected in the production stage. As early as before the apple goes down the tree, the fruit growers color the apples on the tree, pick them in batches according to the coloring effect, sell them in batches, and implement high quality and high price. On the other hand, most fruit farmers in our city are used to selling at a price after one-time picking, which often makes some high-quality apples unable to sell at a good price. The implementation of single-tree or even single-fruit management and hierarchical sales is becoming the trend and competitive advantage of standardized production in many high-quality apple orchards.

To improve the level of competitiveness, in addition to improving the management level and market awareness in the production and harvest links, the renewal of variety selection and cultivation mode is also extremely urgent. Today, with the diversification of market and sales channels, light quantity management is obviously out of date, and it is a misunderstanding to rely on scale to promote sales. As a fruit producing area with very limited planting area, Dalian fruit can never surpass other major fruit producing areas in scale and quantity, but because of the superior development conditions such as climate and geographical location, Dalian fruit can achieve "small and broad" in the aspects of variety selection, cultivation methods and sales channels, and win by relying on characteristics and high quality. In terms of variety selection, we should try our best to have nothing else. For example, small country light fruits should be developed appropriately; sales channels should be continuously broadened, the proportion of sales through traditional channels should be reduced, and the scale of TV shopping and online sales should be improved to attract the attention of middle and high-end consumers.

The number and scale of fruit sales leading enterprises are important indicators to measure the competitiveness of a region's fruit industry development. Large fruit leading enterprises with the ability to expand markets at home and abroad play a major role in promoting regional fruit sales. Compared with Shandong, Shaanxi and other major apple producing areas, Dalian fruit sales leading enterprises have a significant gap in terms of scale and quantity, and building an aircraft carrier enterprise for fruit sales is an important means to solve the problem of "cheap fruit hurting farmers" and broaden the fruit market.