Farmers complain about middlemen as jujube fruit price falls
Farmers complain about middlemen as jujube fruit price falls
The price of jujube fruit has fallen this year and farmers are complaining about traders reaping the lion's share of profits.
Representative of a jujube fruit orchard, Mr Prasith explained that prices have continued falling as farmers still weren't working together as one group, so the price depended on volatile wholesale prices.
Farmers have invested the same costs as last year, but prices have fallen even though they are producing a bigger crop. The biggest problem is that farmers are not collectively marketing their produce as a group and instead are finding it difficult to negotiate individually with traders.
For example, some farmers who produced too much jujube fruit but with lower investment than other farmers would sell at a low price, which would benefit middlemen who in turn would force other farmers to follow the lower prices.
This year, the price of jujube fruit at the farm gate has fallen to 2,000 kip per kilo, but last year even the fertiliser investment and labour costs were higher at 3000 kip.
Mr Prasith said three years ago, his farm planted five hectares which returned more than 200 million kip in total revenue, but now he was only earning around 100 million kip, which was still very low if compared with farmers in Vietnam and Thailand for the same area of land.
As result, some farmers will not be expanding their production and some are even changing to growing vegetables as these crops' prices are on the rise due to high market demand.
The vegetable farmers are enjoying much better incomes this year as prices have gone up four times during the year and now average out at 8,300 kip per kilo, more than three times the 2,500 kip they were last year.
Mr Prasith urged authorities from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to encourage jujube fruit farmers to set up a group as it would make it easier for them to market their crop.
He believed if farmers worked as a group, they would be able to set more sustainable prices to sell to wholesalers which would see jujube fruit growers surviving for the future.
