The areas of north, central, and eastern China that supply vegetables for the Beijing market have had excellent weather conditions since winter began. It has not snowed like last year, nor was there a continuous haze. The transition from autumn to winter went smoothly for vegetable production areas.
Market supply is sufficient and stable
This winter, the Beijing market saw the vegetable wholesale price drop by 2.5% in comparison with the previous month. This was a rare first in the last nine years. Compared to the same period last month the drop in prices even reached 18.4%. Although the retail price increased by 4.2% compared to last month, they are still 10.2% lower than last year in the same period.
Analysts say there are two reasons for the low vegetable prices. First, the northern production areas experienced long periods of rain and lower temperatures in the first week of October, which forced them to transition early from autumn to winter vegetables. This caused the vegetable price to enter a period of increase earlier than usual, but after winter began there was a limit to how much the price could increase. And secondly, the overall conditions for vegetable production in main supply areas have been better than in previous years. The northern production area has a large volume of winter vegetables in storage, and the southern production area increases supply every year. Although their labor cost and transport cost are still increasing, the additional supply still has a depressive influence on the price.
Source: Department of Commerce office of the special delegate station in Tianjin