"After three whole years of slump in the market, local banana growers are now enjoying a big harvest. Since the Chinese new year, the price of bananas from Yunnan has been rising. Within two months, the per kilo price reached 3.7 yuan, which was an increase of 350% compared to the 0.8 yuan before the new year. Recently, with the bananas from other areas and more varieties of fruits available in the market, the prices have gone slightly lower," said Mr. Yao, a local banana grower and distributor.
"Over the past three years, the market situation of bananas was disappointing, most farmers suffered great losses and only 10% to 20% of them were making money. As a result, many pieces of land were abandoned and the total production volume dropped. In the meantime, due to political reasons, Chinese contractors growing bananas in Laos had to leave the country once their contracts expired. Thousands of acres of land in Laos kept degrading, so the quantities of bananas available for export dropped fast and the same problem occurred in Myanmar. In Yunnan, the situation was even worse because of the spread of Panama disease among banana trees and also the limited land left for banana cultivation."
"As a grower/distributor, I have 120 acres of land for banana cultivation. I also purchase bananas from other regions and resell them to places including Hunan, Guilin, Shanxi and Sichuan. It's hard to say how the market performance for bananas will turn out later, because it is affected by many unstable factors, like weather. The climate and the amount of rainfall also directly influence the growth and ripening of bananas, eventually determining their overall yield and quality."
