广播听力:China Moves to Ease Vegetable Oversupply

Vegetable oversupply has become a grave problem in some areas across China, and the suicide of a farmer due to unsaleable vegetables has aroused national attention. The Ministry of Commerce has issued a notice urging local governments to tackle the problem. Zhang Mengyuan has the story.

Vegetable prices across China have been decreasing since the beginning of this month. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, the prices of 13 main vegetable varieties have all dropped by more than 15 percent. In areas like Shandong, Henan and Zhejiang, large amounts of ripe vegetables are left in the fields unreaped, some already starting to rot.

Liu Tong, spokesman from Beijing Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market, explains.

"During the same period last year, cold weather caused a delay of vegetable ripening and resulted in a high market price. Many farmers then blindly expanded their planting scales. But the weather got warm earlier this year, vegetables from both the north and south rushed into the market at the same time, which led to an oversupply and a dramatic drop of prices."

Besides over-production, some people are afraid that leafy vegetables may be radiated because of the nuclear accidents caused by Japan's earthquake. Prices of some vegetables, such as cabbage and spinage, are suffering the most.

But in some urban markets, there are no obvious price drops. According to Li Guotai, researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, several factors have contributed to this.

"Vegetable production areas are usually far away from the markets. Due to increasing fuel prices, transportation costs have risen. Moreover, various charges such as market management fees and taxes add to the retail prices, which are still relatively high. Those who take the biggest risk in the whole selling process are farmers."

The researcher calls for major changes to be made to the sales system.

"The key to solving unbalanced production and sales would be to enforce responsibility of local governments and to establish stable and large scale vegetable production bases. In this way, farmers and distributors are directly connected and production can be more targeted to meet market demand."

Measures issued by the Ministry of Commerce to address the present crisis include better market monitoring, sufficient disclosure of sale and demand information, direct cooperation between farmers and wholesale enterprises, and improved vegetable processing and storage.

But experts point out that these measures will only temporarily ease the problem. If farmers are not guided properly, an undersupply will probably occur next year.

For CRI, I'm Zhang Mengyuan.