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Josephine Ma

In an unusual move, 60,000 farmers from 23 villages in Miaoan township, in Sichuan province, wrote a letter to the Dazhou city government three months ago complaining about the huge losses they suffer due to poor transport.

According to the letter, the only road connecting the mountainous villages and the nearby towns was built in 1991 and was  almost impassible to traffic.

'With no road, we cannot get fertilisers, technology, and information to our town and thousands are so worried,' the letter  said.

'In the harvest season ...  how can we get the watermelons, strawberries and tobacco leaves out of the mountain? About 10 tonnes of watermelons will rot in the field and who will be responsible for the losses of 60 million yuan?

'If we cannot sell the tobacco leaves in the market, 70,000kg  of tobacco leaves will be stacked at home and tobacco farmers will suffer the losses and who will pay them?'

The letter is posted on the Dazhou government website  and cited by the mainland media as an example of how underdeveloped rural transport networks are taking a toll on farmers.

A fruit trader in Hanzhou city, who identified himself  as Mr Zhou, said he found transport  a major obstacle to business.

He said: 'It is so difficult if you don't have your own trucks. The road tolls are so expensive and if you have to hire trucks, the cost is simply so high.'

Mr Zhou said cartage costs could add up to 60 per cent to the total  cost of produce. Logistics services are almost non-existent in rural China, meaning farmers and traders have to come up with ways to get  produce to markets.

Farmers in remote areas or those without good transport connections  risk having their crops rot in the field after a year of hard labour and costly investment in fertiliser and seeds.

According to a report in March in the  China Post News, a newspaper operated by the postal service,  about 37,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables rot on the road every year - and the losses are sufficient to feed 200 million people.

The high percentage of losses is a result of poor transport  and the absence of rural logistics.

Only a small fraction  of farm produce is  frozen or processed before  it is sold.

Huang Zuhui, director of the Centre of Agriculture and Rural Development at Zhejiang University, said the only rural logistics involved was  when supermarkets bought directly from farmers.

'You can sometimes see a large truck overloaded with vegetables driving on the highway with no cover on top and vegetables keep falling off from the truck. You can imagine how much has been damaged on the way,' Mr Huang said.

'But even  the so-called rural logistics we have is by no means close to the modern sense of logistics. The supply chain for farm products in China is immature.'

Ironically, the system is so chaotic  that the products sold in wet markets were actually fresher than those in supermarkets although the latter have some sort of logistics systems in place.

Professor Huang said one of major obstacles for rural logistics  was the unique scattered and disorganised nature of farming.

Farmers  cultivate small plots of land and  usually sit at home and wait for agents to purchase their harvest or use their own means to take the products to the market.

If farmers all grow the same products - which is common - and there is an oversupply, many farmers would see their products rot in the field if they had not planned ahead for transport,  he  said.

Professor Huang said although the government was aware of the need for rural logistics, it was difficult to come up with a plan.

'So far they still have no idea who should play a major role in the process. Farmers are scattered and they don't have the knowledge to do that,' he said.

'So should supermarkets play a main role or should wet markets play a main role in the logistics process? And farmers are so scattered and it is very difficult to have a logistics network unless they are more organised.'

He said the government should encourage farmers to form alliances in production and sales,  as well as encouraging the growth of logistics in the countryside.

Some scholars have said the lack of logistics has become a serious hurdle to China becoming a major fruit producer for the world.

The case of orange farmer Liu Guozhong sheds light on the prospect of fruit production in China and how  economies of scale in farming can help solve transport problems.

The young man,  in his 20s, started growing oranges in his home village in Xunwu county in Jiangxi four years ago after working as a migrant workers in Shantou.

He said growing fruit was much more profitable and flexible than working in the cities, and  his neighbours all turned to  growing oranges. Everybody started to grow oranges and now you can keep driving for two hours and you are still surrounded by orange trees here,' Mr Liu said.

Now, the area has become so famous for oranges  that buyers  send their own vehicles to collect oranges and fertiliser suppliers to deliver goods.

But not all farmers are as lucky as Mr Liu and China's ability to help farmers out of poverty and lift the agricultural sector will hinge on the development of an efficient means to get  products to the market.



Bringing the world to the countryside