In Lianghua Town, Huidong, Huizhou, there is a fruit imported from Taiwan and widely cultivated in recent years, green jujube.
Taiwan jujube, the fruit is long and oval, the skin is bright and the meat is juicy, the skin is thin, the flesh is milky white and sweet and juicy, the core is 1 piece Per 100 grams of jujube contains 1.2 grams of protein, 0.3 grams of fat, 23.7 grams of carbohydrates, rich in vitamins and a variety of trace elements.
During the epidemic period last year, due to large-scale road closures, transportation interruptions, and the general closure of supermarkets, it was very difficult to sell fresh fruits produced by farmers. At that time, farmers could only watch the fruits rot in the branches and the ground was covered with fruits that had fallen to the ground.
In this case, I was asked for help, and I also united a group of colleagues, and friends carried out vigorous agricultural assistance activities to help farmers sell some green dates and solve their urgent needs.
Yesterday, I went down to Lianghua Town to see how the sales of green dates were doing this year.
The old witch of the fruit grower received me warmly. When I asked him about his income from planting dates this year, I was surprised by old Wu's answer, because his family's income from green dates this year was not as good as last year.
I wonder, last year's jujube was a productive year, but because of the outbreak of the epidemic, sales were not smooth, and eventually some of the dates were not sold and rotted, so the old witch lost money, how can it be lost this year?
The old witch told me that the first was a sudden frost before the Spring Festival, which made the soon-to-ripen jujube freeze bad, and the overall output of jujube was only about half of last year's, which was the first reason for this year's debt.
The second reason is that although sales have been smooth this year, the price has fallen. A few years ago, the wholesale price of the jujube field here was at least 4 yuan to 5 yuan, this year's jujube, the best quality of the big fruit, the wholesale price is only 2 yuan 8, a smaller green jujube, the wholesale price actually fell to more than 1 yuan. At such a low price, he didn't even bother to ask the workers to go to the orchard to pick the fruit, and the money sold by the green dates was not enough to pay the workers' wages.
(Rotten fruit that falls to the ground)
We remember the story in Mr. Ye Shengtao's "Harvest Three or Five Buckets", the farmers broke up, but the grain price fell, and it was a hard time all year round.
However, this year, the old witch's green jujube was obviously poor, so why did the price still fall?
This starts with the entire jujube planting industry. About ten years ago, a Taiwanese boss introduced jujube to Lianghua cultivation, when the mainlanders were still very unfamiliar with this fruit, thinking that jujube was both delicious and fresh, so the sales of jujube has been very good, the price is also very high, the peak sold to ten yuan a catty.
The old witch also began to grow green dates about ten years ago. In the past few years, the old witch did make money, but, starting about five years ago, he found it more and more difficult to make money growing green dates, and even began to lose money year after year.
Why is this happening? The old witch told me the general reason.
About five or six years ago, after discovering that jujubes made money, many merchants who were not engaged in agriculture ran to the town to rent land on a large scale and hire workers to grow jujubes.
After the jujube is planted, it can enter the harvest period in the second year, so that the yield of the jujube has doubled several times in just one or two years. According to Lao Wu, the planting area of jujube in Lianghua has reached 7,000 mu, and the annual output has reached more than 10,000 tons!
If you think about it, what is the concept of a town's jujube production of more than 10,000 tons, a giant ship of 10,000 tons, or more than 100 wagons of 10 trains can be pulled. This is just the production of one town, looking at the southern provinces, how many such towns are growing green dates? In this way, can the price of green dates not slip down in a straight line?
In the orchard, I came across a farmer who was harvesting dates. He said that he was ready to completely abandon the cultivation of green dates and prepare to go outside to help others work, because the income from part-time work was stable and he did not need large-scale investment.
For the old witch, it is really difficult to ride the tiger now. The orchard land was rented by him at an annual rent of one thousand yuan per acre, and the contract was still several years away. A lot of money had been invested in planting dates in the early days, and it was completely unrealistic to replant others now.
From last year to this year, the old witch's green jujube survived typhoons, frosts, and epidemics, and finally lost more than three thousand pieces per acre.
Just stay up like this, the old witch sighed.