How The Trade War Crushed A Growing Chinese Market For U.S. Cranberries
Cranberry producers in Massachusetts, and around the country, are slowly drowning in surplus fruit.To get more news about chinese market, you can visit shine news official website.
For years, harvests in the three major cranberry-producing countries — the United States, Canada and Chile — have swelled, while many consumers have turned away from sugary beverages like cranberry juice. As a result, the global supply of cranberries has outgrown demand, and many Bay State growers have been pushed to the brink of failure.
"We're in what I think is a really tough spot right now," said Dom Fernandes, a third-generation cranberry grower in Carver, Mass. His company, Fresh Meadows Farm, is struggling to break even.
"I would've loved to have seen this farm stay in our family for another generation, and I'm not optimistic about that," he said.If things don't turn around soon, Fernandes expects his family won't be the only one looking to leave the industry.
"We're seeing consolidation take place, we're seeing small full-time growers switching to small part-time growers, and we're also seeing growers looking to simply walk away," he said.In 2008, a Massachusetts grower could expect to fetch around $58.60 per barrel of fruit, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). By 2018, the price fell to $22.30 — a 62% drop.
To make matters worse, the ongoing trade war between Washington, D.C., and Beijing has put a tight squeeze on international cranberry sales.
As the Trump administration prepares for a new round of trade talks, Chinese tariffs on American cranberries remain in place, adding to the economic pain growers are feeling.
However, the makings of the current cranberry glut were visible as early as 2012. And it was around that time that the industry, in search of new customers, focused its marketing muscle on China. The bet was that the world's most populous country might just be big enough to soak up that excess fruit.But there was a little problem: Most Chinese consumers had no idea what a cranberry was.At the 2019 International Fruit Expo, held this summer in the sprawling southeastern city of Guangzhou, the smell of opportunity was in the air. Or maybe it was the aroma of durian, the famously pungent fruit that its haters — and even many of its lovers — say smells like gym socks.
For three days, the convention hall was transformed into a sort of indoor marketplace, with vendors from dozens of different countries beckoning passersby to their stalls with trays of chopped fruit. Among the goods: Vietnamese durian, Iranian figs, Taiwanese pineapple and Indonesian snakeskin fruit (which, if you're wondering, looks like a pear injected with python DNA; the booth that sold it had run out before this reporter could find out how it tastes).
For any business trying to get a foothold in China's $7 billion imported fruit market, trade shows like this one are a chance to introduce products to new taste buds and, hopefully, find an importer who can provide a gateway into the world's second-largest economy.