China: Gannan navel oranges achieve highest ever prices

On November 5th, the harvest of navel oranges in Gannan (Jiangxi province) officially started. This is the earliest possible picking time, as it had earlier resulted from a test, carried out by the local fruit industry, on all navel orange producers in Ganzhou city and was also predicted in the short-term predictions carried out by the city's meteorological department. This also means that all so-called "Gannan navel oranges" that entered the market before this date were fake goods. achieve

Deng Xiuxin, chief scientist of the national institution for technologies in the citrus business, comments: "The Chinese output of citrus fruits this year is expected to be 20% lower than that of 2015. The domestic production of navel oranges is likely to be reduced by 25% over the same period, but for the Gannang navel oranges, forecasts indicate a lost production of 30-40%. Because of this, there's a short supply on the market for citrus fruits. Adding up the soaring prices at the end of 2015's season, many fruit farmers have high hopes for this year's price for citrus fruits: they hope for a smaller output but with higher prices."

Currently, the plantation for Gannan navel oranges has an area of 105 hectares (1 050 000 mu). Last year, the gross output value for the complete navel orange producing industry in Ganzhou city was 1,43 million EUR (10,5 billion RMB), of which the output value for fresh fruits was 791 thousand EUR (5,8 billion RMB). 250 000 plantations and 700 000 fruit farmers benefited from this. The value for Gannang navel oranges in 2015 accounted for 8,97 billion EUR (65,78 billion RMB). The prices for products originating from the primary agricultural industry in those trademark regions are on top of the list in China.