Reasons for the recent decline in agricultural product prices
Officials from the Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission said that under the continuous regulation, the overall price level began to fall, and the price fluctuations of some agricultural products such as vegetables and fruits were greatly affected by seasonal factors. The National Development and Reform Commission 1 said that commodity futures prices have fallen sharply recently. According to the monitoring of domestic commodity futures trading prices, domestic commodity prices have fallen sharply. Domestic commodity futures prices such as rubber, cotton, soybean oil and sugar all fell by more than 10%. Cotton fell the most, 23.6%. The prices of agricultural products such as wheat, corn and indica rice have dropped by about 6% on average. According to the analysis of the National Development and Reform Commission, the main reasons for the rapid decline in commodity futures prices are as follows: First, continuous price control measures have curbed excessive speculation in the market, which has been reflected in market expectations. Second, it is affected by the collapse of commodity prices in the international market. Third, in the early stage, the market was over-speculative, the price was divorced from the fundamentals of supply and demand, and the funds were profit-taking and quickly evacuated. It is understood that with the decline in futures prices, the national spot market prices such as cotton, sugar and soybean oil have fallen as a whole, and some are stable. But overall, the decline in spot prices is not as obvious as that in futures. Especially recently, the prices of basic necessities such as vegetables, fruits, eggs and meat in China have not dropped significantly. Some soybean prices in the central region even rose. An official of the Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission said that the previous and current price control focus was to dispel speculation and inflation expectations first, and then stabilize the price level by means of "vegetable basket" and "rice bag" government responsibility system and increasing supply. The Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission admits that it is not easy to further reduce the price level of some necessities, because the prices of agricultural products such as vegetables have seasonal fluctuations, costs and other reasons. Therefore, it will take some time for the overall price level of agricultural products to fall back. The prices of major agricultural products monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture show that the market quotations of wheat, flour, soybeans, soybean oil, corn and other products in most parts of the country are the same as yesterday. Some products that rose slightly were evaluated as "light transaction" or "strong market wait and see" by the monitoring report of the Ministry of Agriculture. This means that a series of price intervention policies of the National Development and Reform Commission are playing a role in the market. The price supervision group of the National Development and Reform Commission is currently conducting a nationwide inspection of agricultural product prices.