"The season of cherries from Shandong Province has just arrived. Compared to last year, the cherries this year are smaller and the percentage of those with good quality is relatively low. The market prices have showed a polarized trend based on the quality of those cherries," said Mr, Liu, general manager of Xiamen Xinhongwei Trade Ltd.
"The dry weather from last year caused the harvest to start one week earlier than normal. The yields this year are slightly lower and most of the cherries are not quality ones. Pricewise, there's been a polarization. Low-quality cherries are 15% cheaper than last year, but good ones remain the same prices as last year. As for consumption regions, similar to the situation from the previous years, most of the quality ones have been sold to southern part of the country like Guangdong and Fujian Provinces."
"With the improvement of people's living standards, the consumption of cherries has been growing year by year. Even during the Chinese new year, imported cherries with a price of 70 yuan per box were selling out fast. Over recent years, even though the quality of domestic cherries has become better because of the improvement of their cultivation techniques, the quality differences between these cherries and imported ones are still very big. Personally, I believe, for the domestic cherry cultivation industry to improve further, our government needs to take measures and provide more guidance to growers and help them adopt more scientific methods to grow the cherries."
