Chinese farmers have been selling maize 20-30 percent cheaper than last year since this autumn began, while wheat prices dropped by nearly 10 percent in early October and rice prices in some regions are marginally lower than previous years.
It is rare to see the prices of the three staple food grains of China drop simultaneously. Analysts attributed the phenomenon mainly to the worldwide declines in grain prices and the overstock at home.
China adopts the policy of purchasing grains for state reserve in order to keep the grain prices stable.
However, the current actual market price is about 30 percent lower than the state purchase price, indicating the diminishing impacts of the national policy, said analyst Li Guoxiang with the Rural Development Institute under Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is expected that the much lower grain prices would cut farmers' disposable incomes by nearly 100 billion yuan in total, said Ma Wenfeng, analyst with cnagri.com.
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