What should be the price of cabbage? How to transform and upgrade Chinese cabbage?

Editor's note: entering the cold winter, Chinese cabbage is concentrated on the market, and it encounters the strange circle of "more and less": the price of vegetables is high, the price of vegetables plunges, a large number of unsalable, vegetable farmers are anxious. The reason behind it is not complicated, and the market is determined by supply and demand. Chinese cabbage, which used to be the "home dish" of people's dinner table, is no longer the "protagonist". How to grow cabbage? Where should vegetable farmers go? The reporter walked into the "hometown of Chinese cabbage" in Tangwang Town of Jinan to explore the transformation strategy of "home food" into "four seasons dish".

A market with more and less

The lowest price of cabbage is 0.13 yuan per jin, but the vegetable farmers are becoming more rational.

Jiang Shixin, 48, has been growing Chinese cabbage for 20 years. This "old vegetable farmer" in Jingjia Village, Tang Wang Town, has already formed a habit of planting 4 mu and as little as 2 mu for more than a year. Moreover, he also planned to keep planting in the future.

"earn less if the price is low, and earn more if the price is high." Just this past November, the price of Tang Wang Chinese cabbage fell to 134 cents. Although Jiang Shixin felt a little lower than in previous years, he was not very upset. "the prices of most vegetables in 2014 are generally cheap, and even if they follow the market, the price of cabbage is not much higher."

Monitoring data show that since winter Chinese cabbage was put on the market in late October, the price of Chinese cabbage in Jinan has fallen for five consecutive weeks, with a cumulative drop of more than 50%. However, the state of low-level operation did not last long. In the last ten days, with the continuous drop in temperature, the price of Tang Wang Chinese cabbage has slowly rebounded to 28 cents.

"Chinese cabbage is relatively simple to manage, that is, it is watered four times and fertilized twice." Jiang Shixin calculated an account: 20 yuan per mu of cabbage seeds, 300 yuan for chemical fertilizers, 80 yuan for pesticides, and 300 yuan for base fertilizer. The cost is only 700 to 800 yuan, which translates to more than 10 cents per catty. According to the current vegetable prices, vegetable farmers can probably make a profit of about 10 cents.

Yan Bingqiang, president of Tangwang Town Chinese Cabbage Industry Association, said that 2006 was the peak of Tang Wang Chinese cabbage, with a planting area of more than 17000 mu, accounting for 23% of the town's arable land.

During the winter harvest in 2011, just in time for the heavy snow, the purchase price of Tang Wang Chinese cabbage once rose to 70 or 80 cents, or even one yuan per jin at the most expensive time. Nevertheless, the planting area of Tang Wang Chinese cabbage did not increase significantly in the next few years.

According to Yan Bingqiang, in 2014, the planting area of Chinese cabbage in Tangwang Town was 8000 mu, and the average yield per mu reached 9000 jin, an increase of nearly 20% over the previous year. "it is mainly retail investors, and the scale is relatively small."

Li Zaichen, deputy mayor in charge of agriculture in Tangwang Town, said that after years of market experience, vegetable farmers in Tangwang Town have become more rational and no longer panic about price fluctuations. "it should be said that they all have a certain degree of psychological tolerance. for example, at the beginning of last year, it seemed that the price was relatively low, and there were obviously more vegetable farmers who were in no hurry to sell Chinese cabbage. Early planting also pay attention to the wrong time, early autumn and late autumn varieties match. "

The pressure under the large circulation pattern

The demand decreases, the supply increases, and the scenery of "head food" no longer exists.

Not far from the Tangwang Town Government is the Hanxi vegetable Wholesale Market, one of the three major vegetable markets in Tangwang Town. In late November every year, part of the task of collecting and storing Chinese cabbage for Jinan is undertaken here. At present, the trading peak of Chinese cabbage has passed, and the market appears to be somewhat deserted. Under the rain shelter, 2000 tons of Chinese cabbage collected and stored in Jinan are neatly arranged, covered with thick straw blankets.

Chinese cabbage, the king of the Tang Dynasty, is known as "four beautiful vegetables in Jinan". In the 1980s, as a "home dish" in the period of planned economy, Tang Wang Chinese cabbage accompanied countless citizens of Jinan through a long winter. Today, vegetable production in Tangwang Town is already very different from that in those days.

"Tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers and so on, there are in the supermarket, basically can be found here." Han Huiping, the village branch secretary, is not only the person in charge of the market, but also the director of the agricultural cooperative in the village. "now it is all intensive management, and the scale and production level of growing vegetables have been greatly improved compared with the past."

Through the implementation of standardized production strategy, Tangwang Town has established a standardized vegetable production base of more than 20,000 mu, so that citizens of Jinan can eat dozens of fresh vegetables all the year round. The change of vegetable planting mode and structure also objectively squeezes the consumption demand of Chinese cabbage.