综合一区欧美国产,99国产麻豆免费精品,九九精品黄色录像,亚洲激情青青草,久久亚洲熟妇熟,中文字幕av在线播放,国产一区二区卡,九九久久国产精品,久久精品视频免费

   

Food-driven inflation bittersweet for farmers

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-03-10 22:59

For Chen Baoquan, the recent price rise in agricultural products, although welcome, did not make him any happier as production and living costs were also up.

The 46-year-old farmer once thought, by taking advantage of rising crops prices, he could earn extra money to improve his family's living standard.

Other factors also contributed to his optimism: the government abolished the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax and started to offer direct subsidies to encourage crop growing and bridge the rural-urban income gap.

His dream, however, did not come true as the surging prices of agricultural production materials and the high overall price level erased the gains from crops sales.

Chen, from a village in Pingyuan in the eastern Shandong Province, said the 500 kilogram of wheat produced by one mu (0.067 hectares) of land, on average, could be sold for 800 yuan (112 US dollars) as the current market price was 1.6 yuan per kg.

After deducting the production materials costs, including those for fertilizer and irrigation, the gross earnings, including labor, were only 500 yuan, he said.

"This (earnings) is almost flat from a couple of years ago. Though the wheat price rises by 0.2 yuan per kilogram, our production costs also surge."

He cited a 50-kg bag of compound fertilizer as an example. It had jumped to 200 yuan from 130 yuan a year ago.

The prices that started to rise since the beginning of last year had greatly eroded the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of low-income farmers like Chen.

"My family earns 5,000 yuan per year by growing crops. That could meet our living costs a year ago, but now that can no longer make ends meet," he said.

Chen Xiwen, director of the office of the central leading group on rural work, said on January 31 the price level of agricultural products should remain at reasonable and profitable levels to make farmers willing to engage in agricultural production.

Analysts believed farm produce prices were returning to normal levels as the country had long kept them artificially low to subsidize the development of the industry.

"People often see the benefits brought to farmers by the surging prices of agricultural products, but that is only one side of the coin," director Chen said. "Increasingly, more farmers are no longer self-sufficient. They also buy many consumer products, including food, at the markets."


(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)

   1 2   


Related Stories  
福海县| 长春市| 阿荣旗| 福安市| 小金县| 沂水县| 永仁县| 九江市| 前郭尔| 桃江县| 海林市| 大名县| 天水市| 怀集县| 玛沁县| 屯留县| 宿松县| 华宁县| 呼伦贝尔市| 南华县| 乐昌市| 馆陶县| 广饶县| 江陵县| 建阳市| 公安县| 全州县| 中西区| 永丰县| 衡东县| 六盘水市| 江北区| 佛坪县| 左贡县| 昔阳县| 双城市| 新郑市| 普格县| 丰都县| 依兰县| 昔阳县|