The harvest season of pomelos begins around Mid-Autumn Festival [13 September 2019]. And this is the time of year when pomelos enter the market in large volumes. This year, however, the market conditions are not great. Why do the once popular pomelos now encounter "unmarketable" conditions? Why did the price of pomelos suddenly drop this year?
First, this year the pomelo harvest was abundant. The market conditions were good in the last few years. This is in part because some traders were speculating and they pushed up the pomelo price. Still, the fruit market seemed to fare better than the cereal market, so a number of farmers abandoned their cereal crops and began to grow fruit. Some of them began to grow pomelo.
Second, the pomelo product quality is not great this year. The fruits are quite small and dry. Consumers ignore them. The drought in the Hunan production areas was quite severe this year. The last two months of the season saw very little rain. The pomelos therefore stayed small and did not store much fluid. This greatly affects the flavor.
Third, some farmers harvested too early and supplied the market with unripe fruit. The pomelo production volume is not bad this year and farmers can see that competition will be intense. Some of them decided to harvest their pomelos early and sell them for a good price before the market was flooded. Consumers found these unripe pomelo difficult to eat, which affected their opinion of pomelos in general.
Finally, the price of pomelos was too high in previous years and consumers have begun to ignore them in favor of other fruits.
Source: Baidu News