Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Those fresh greens on your dinner plate don't just grow there.
They most likely have traveled across China.
We go deep into how and why vegetable prices have stayed affordable, even through the winter chill.
And stick around for a special segment, Heart to Heart, your questions are answers.
Business, tech, culture, or whatever stirs your soul, we are ready to dive in.
Keep sending them to roundtablepodcast at qq .com.
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Young. For today's program, I'm joined by Yu Shun and Yu Shan in the studio.
First on today's show.
You might assume fresh vegetables would be pricier and harder to grow in winter.
But to everyone's delight, whether you're in the colder north or the warmer south of China, a great variety of fresh leafy greens are available at stable and affordable prices.
How is this made possible?
Higher vegetable yields, improved cold chain storage and transportation services from south to north, Plus, fierce competition in the logistics industry have all contributed.
This winter, there's plenty happening to keep your veggie costs low.
And guys, can you please give us a quick check on the current winter vegetable prices in the market?
I mean, to know more detailed about that, then we need to hear from the personnel that actually trays fresh vegetables in the market this winter.
So one fresh interview from China Business Herald in early January revealed that this personnel in charge of Sinfa Di wholesale market, which is the largest food supply market in Beijing.
And this person shared that even though the sales of vegetables and fruits have increased before and after the spring festival holidays, the prices are kept within an average range.
And there were over 25 ,000 tons of vegetables newly put on the market on December 31st in 2024.
And that is far exceeding the usual daily support of 20 ,000 tons.
And also the weighted average price of vegetables is 3 .31 yuan or not .46 US dollars per kilograms.
So that's even slightly decreased comparing to normal days, right?
Yeah, to be more specific, there is a report by Life Week, which is a lifestyle magazine, saying that during the spring festival, the vegetable price remained quite stable.
Most vegetables were sold at like 4 to 8 yuan.
That's about 55 cents to $1 .1 for one kilogram.
including those used to make dumplings like you know chinese chives but many vegetables were sold at even 16 or 20 yuan that's about 2 .2 to 2 .8 us dollars a kilogram during last year's spring festival period so we can see there is um it is more stable we can say and some even decreased The price even
decreased compared to last year.
Yeah, and there's always been these waves of or rather curves of changing of price due to different reasons.
There's the dropping supplies caused by the cold weather, and sometimes there's this costly storage and transportation fees in previous years that might cause these differentiations on price.
We saw this time last year, it was like twice the price as per this year.
So yeah, there's always these differentiations, but this year we see that it's capped in a relatively reasonable price range.
Well, what I can agree with you is that every year, like the price fluctuates a bit due to seasonal supplies and, you know, the weather condition, etc.
But to compare the same period of time of two years and see that there's quite the price variation and this year being more affordable during spring festival is why this topic initially caught our attention.
And that's why it's really also just interesting.
Don't you know, want to know, you know, the inner workings of things or what happens behind the curtains, so to speak.
And today we will go into the various reasons that are contributing to the price level of vegetables and groceries in our country.
And this is almost like the bottom line for average citizens because what people care about most is how we spend our money to buy food and put that on our dinner table.
And that's so essential to everyday people's lives.
And that's why it's also worth our attention here.
So why are winter vegetables not costing you more?
It has something to do, especially when you look at the Chinese context, the south to north vegetable transportation, which is a relatively new phenomenon and definitely a solution, especially for us northern folks who live in the colder part of the country.
And I remember as a Beijinger, a younger millennial, and when I was a kid, it was common to see that, okay, back then we lived in bungalows instead of apartment buildings.
And outside of every, well, every household's door, there's this pile of cabbage.
And that was key. That was a key source of veggies for us during the wintertime.
But now fast forward to today for younger Gen Z Chinese people out there, you probably have never seen that before.
And that's only one small example to how technology has changed, transportation and storage to vegetables have changed, and how or what we put on our dinner tables during wintertime has changed.
So guys, talk to me.
Tell everyone about, first of all, this south to north vegetable transportation.
Well, first of all, as a southerner, as a person who was born and raised in the south part of China, I didn't realize that you guys are eating vegetables from a...
I'm joking, of course.
But it is actually something that farmers will produce actually for these kind of transporting vegetables from the south to the north, right?
It is actually a very important measure to resolve the mismatch between supply and demand of vegetables.
It promotes the deep integration of production areas and markets, of course, enriches the variety of fruits and vegetables in the north and stabilizes the supply of fresh agricultural products in the northern market.
And we can see that it is a quite important measure to ensure the daily lives of people in the north because you can not only get that kind of vegetables that you grow in these greenhouses, but you can also get basically vegetables from all around the country.
Yeah, that's true, because one thing I noticed from this Live Week story is that, well, I didn't really notice this before I actually read about this, you know, that it revealed that the vegetables sold on the winter market in the north this year are mostly counter -season vegetables.
And even if there are winter greenhouse planting in the north as well, most of such vegetable supplies still come from transporting vegetables from the south to the north.
And some of the southern regions that's iconically known to be producing a lot of the vegetables that's serving the northern regions are the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in central south China and also the Yunnan province and Hainan province, which are all located at the other south of this country.
And also take Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an example.
So this is according to one of their governmental webpages.
So Guangxi has developed a modern industrial system that's centered around six major agricultural industries with annual output value of over 100 billion yuan.
So that's almost 13 .8 billion U .S.
dollars. And that ensures an ample supply of vegetables and fruits to the country, kind of like all over the country.
And in 2023 alone, Guangxi saw a 5 .2 percent year -on -year increase in the output of pork, beef, mutton, and poultry meat production, alongside an annual output of vegetables exceeding 44 million metric tons.
That's a lot, and that's a lot of supply to all different regions across northern China.
More than south to north, there are also west to east transportation of their vegetable in Guangxi as well.
So now we see that Guangxi has implemented this fruit quality improvement project, which focuses on the development of citrus, mango, and other sort of like tropical fruits in a way, And also their respective industries as well, which achieves this year -round availability of seasonal fruits.
That's, you know, transporting via trucks, we're trying, we're not sure, to all around China.
So it's like, we're not stealing vegetables from you guys.
We're buying off your very ample local natural produce, which is kind of, you know, nice for people all over the country.
Yes, and I saw that Guangxi has also implemented a fruit quality improvement project focusing on the development of a lot of fruits like mango and other fruit industries, achieving year round availability of seasonal fruits.
And I know that right now we can actually have like different areas, cuisines in basically in one city, like here in Beijing.
If you like into like Yunnan cuisine of all of these different types of mushrooms, you can have them here in Beijing or the beef in Guangdong area.
So not only that, now you can even enjoy the, you know, reasonable price that with the authentic taste of that areas.
Yeah, and that sounds like a great opportunity for anybody who's a food lover that nowadays, sometimes it's not so drastically sort of noticeable for people that you're having these so -called counter seasonal vegetables or fruits, like you guys mentioned, And since fresh fruits can be shipped and transported
across the country from the land where it is grown so easily, then people don't really give it second thought when we are purchasing these goods, these produce from the market.
And also sort of on the defense for northerners, in case you didn't know, Heilongjiang province, which is right up there in the northeastern part of China, is also coined as the country's bread basket.
And it is well known for its produce of such great, tasty, creamy rice.
And that's being transported to all over the country.
Yeah, so I think, you know, we're all brothers and sisters and we have comparative advantages and then we share it with each other.
And that's what keeps us strong, healthy and keeps the economy going as well.
And just to add slightly upon He Yang's idea just now, so this is not just happening in China as well, as far as I've researched, you know, like transporting the very well -grown ample vegetable and fruit or grocery supplies in general to other parts of the country or to other countries within that region.
And for example, the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, has kind of reported on these types of similar trade dynamics where countries with varying climates exchange agricultural goods.
the province of Almeria in southeastern Spain, for example, has some of the driest conditions in Europe.
Yet with access to groundwater and abundance of sunlight, it has become one of the major hubs of greenhouse agriculture all over Europe.
So their use of greenhouse spread rapidly in the past few decades and has seen several new innovations as well, such as drip irrigation, the use of artificial soil and just pushing crops yields up and all different kind of new technologies during the past, say, 50 years to 70 years.
And by some estimates, Elmeria's greenhouses now produce between 2 .5 million and 3 .5 million tons of fruits and vegetables per year, which is enough to make them a major source of off -season tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and also melons for people all around Europe.
So that's like cross -country or intercontinental kind of transportation rather than here the case in China between provinces and north to south regions.
Yeah, also China is so big.
And you're talking about the EU, the European Union.
I think it makes a lot of sense.
I mean, if you go back to the history of its formation, then, yes, it makes a lot of sense for them to really, you know, trade like that.
But also we're talking about this in an interesting and precarious international climate when now just seeing all the trade news coming or more like tariff news coming out of the U .S.
it's a time for everybody to sort of put free trade a practice a concept under the magnifying glass again and we'll not go there in depth since we're not that kind of show but yes if you're talking and looking at a domestic matter then yes it's so much smoother as we see all these Produce being transported
province to province, city to city here in China.
And efficiency in moving produce as well as storing them has a major impact on the price you pay at checkout.
So let's take a look at cold storage warehouse and cold chain logistics in transporting vegetables in this country.
So actually cold storage and cold chain transportation are quite necessary in selling fresh produce that can reduce the loss rate of agricultural products, extend their shelf life and enable them to be sold in a wider area and promote the circulation of agricultural products from the place of origin to
the national and even international markets.
I've also seen some new energy mobile cold storage units, saying that solar -powered mobile cold storage units are widely used in places like Shandong, which is in northern China, and Henan in central China.
They offer features such as quick installation, which can be completed in three hours, and also flexibility in relocation, making them especially suitable for the first -mile pre -cooling needs of agricultural products from scattered production areas.
So, for example, the solar cold storage units in Henan can remotely control temperature and humidity, reducing post -harvest loss of cherries by more than 30%.
So that is, I think, huge improvement and a cool technology that we are using.
I mean, cool in cooling.
No pun intended or absolutely pun intended.
Yeah. What are some of the other aspects of cold storage and cold chain transportation that has caught your attention, Yushin?
I mean, when we're talking about cold storage, I think with the development of e -commerce in recent years is really, it can't be ignored that China's cold storage and cold chain logistics services has already started to prosper even in years ago, ever since our e -commerce started to boom.
And we noticed that the demand of two services grew faster, which are the demand of building cold storage warehouses, like Yixin mentioned, and also promoting cold chain transportation service that's been soaring in recent years as well.
And that is due to the huge daily consumption of meat and vegetables in city areas among different regions here in China.
And also, in the meantime, we see that such services also contributed to the catering and food processing industries as well, as Roundtable has touched upon this for several times, that there are more and more prepared meals that's delivered from central cold storage warehouses to all over the city,
which makes it faster and more efficient for the chain store restaurants to prepare food for their customers.
So that has been something that's quite obvious in the Chinese society these days, that the cold chain transportation and also storage expansion is now, you know, facilitating the development of several industries, not just the grocery shopping and transporting, but also the food industries and, yeah,
food processing industries, rather.
And some cold chain solutions in China utilize what's called cryogenic freezing techniques.
In Chinese, I think it's called tiwin kind of solutions, which use liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide to rapidly freeze food and other products, preserving their quality during transportation.
And this is particularly important for exporting sensitive food products such as seafood and also really good for transportation of certain fruits and vegetables.
And we can move on to the next point.
That is, you know, cold storage faces the problem of apparently there's oversupply and this is a recent thing that's happened in this in this country and in recent years we have seen a cold storage seeing a lot of investment in this area but actually you know maybe there has been a drop in cost in price
simply because there is too much of this kind of facility being supplied, but not enough demand.
So the supply of cold storage warehouse may be over the demand.
You know, the Cold Chain Logistics Committee published the analysis report on cold storage market in the first three quarters of 2024.
And in the first three quarters, The demand for cold storage was about 17 .6 million cubic meters, and the supply of cold storage for rental was 32 .6 million cubic meters.
That's actually indicating that the overall market supply exceeded demand, and nearly half of the cold storage warehouses failed to be rented out.
And in that case, well, empty warehouses need to be filled up.
Yes. And that is the thing that we're looking at right now.
And that may lead to the dropping rental cost because, well, the demand is only that much, but there are a lot of supply.
Yeah. Sorry. So that contributes to the overall drop in price.
And therefore we see, you know, you're wondering why is it that this year some of the vegetables are actually cheaper than the peak season last year?
Then, well, if you have to do the calculation and then all the costs add up, and if there's a drop in cost, there might be a drop in the tag price that you're paying for at the checkout.
And Yuxian, you had something to say here.
No, I was just about to mention some datas to just back up on Steve's.
Sorry, I see Steve all the time somehow that Yushun is sitting in his chair.
But anyways, so yeah, just to back up on Yushun's point earlier.
So you are right, indeed, because as the market expands, we see there has been a dropping of rental costs for storing delicate groceries or produce such as some fruits and vegetables.
And also, according to the Discovery of Life week story, that daily rent for one square meter of cold storage in Beijing has dropped from 4 .5 yuan, which is less than, sorry, that's not 0 .6 US dollar a year ago to 3 .5 yuan nowadays, or not 0 .48 US dollar, which is a decrease of 20%.
And then outside of Beijing, when we look at the city of Zhengzhou, located in central China's Henan province, the rent for low -priced cold storage in November 2024 was 2 .2 yuan per square meter per day.
And then that is a decrease of nearly 4 .4 percent comparing to that time in 2023.
So we see this is happening all over China as well.
And also we're seeing faster transportation apparently leads to a drop in price at the same time.
I mean, I've read some observers' reflections on this situation in the logistics industry, and they're worrying that because of this intense competition and there's like razor -thin profit margins for those in the industry, and then everybody's engaged in that neijuan or involution act again.
That is, there's almost like a race to the bottom to compete for the customers out there.
But everybody's hurting in the industry.
Of course, as an average consumer, you're happy with whatever the lower price is.
But could you also explain what's going on in the logistics industry in regard of all of this?
Actually, a lot of policies are making these things happening.
five departments, including the Ministry of Transport, published an implementation guideline to promote the development of the cold chain logistics in April 2022.
And I suppose in the future, with the further popularization of technology and digital upgrades, such as the application of 5G or AI, the efficiency and coverage of vegetable cold chain logistics will continue to expand.
And that's definitely an interesting recent happening that is taking place in this country that we're seeing there's more high tech involved.
And in the initial stage, high tech might mean that there's initial investment, which is quite expensive.
But as the technology continues to develop, as more people start using it, hopefully, inevitably, the cost will be brought down and then the investment can be recouped in some shape or form.
We'll be back.
