Pricing of vegetables should benefit farmers, consumers
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The recent tragic death of a cabbage farmer in Shandong Province startled the nation, demanding that the government make more efforts to protect farmers' interests as well as to straighten out the pricing mechanism for vegetables.
On April 16, 39-year-old Han Jin hanged himself due to the plunging prices of cabbage, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Because of low prices, many farmers have decided to throw away unsalable vegetables that ripened later than usual in northern China, causing a temporary oversupply in a market already saturated with vegetables from the south.
Vegetable prices dropped by 9.8 percent on average last week and by 16.2 percent over the past three weeks, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce.
At the same time, the falling prices of vegetables bring no profits to consumers in cities. Many people dwelling in urban areas complained that the prices of vegetables were high, owing to continuous growth of the consumer price index, which rose by 5.4 percent in March over the same period of last year.
Distribution is the key to the problem. The prices of vegetables are usually raised 10 to 20 times from a rural garden to an urban market thanks to the high cost of logistics.
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