Why Are Lemon Prices Low This Year?

It's during the harvest season of lemon on 28th, November in 2019, when we finished the last time picking in our own planting grouds, the purchasing price of fresh lemon was still 4RMB per kg, half that of last year.
In recent years, the price of fresh lemon can be described as "ups and downs." in 2013 and 2014 lemon price was more than ten yuan per kilogram. In 2015, the lowest price was less than 2 yuan per kilogram. In 2016, lemon rose to nearly 8 yuan per kilogram. In 2018 and 2019 we saw another dropping in price, again.

Here are reasons of the unstable lemon price:
1. In recent years, as demand has increased, the lemon price in China has gone up. In 2013, the lemon price had reached its peak, with an average price of more than 10 yuan per kilogram. However, the situation did not last long. Later, with the increase of planting area and the entry of foreign lemons into the domestic market, China lemon dropped rapidly.
2. Also with the domestic competition between different planting areas in China, it make lemon price go down more rapidly.
3. Weak processing capacity is also an important reason why the lemon price is difficult to stabilize. The processing proportion accounts for about 20% of the total production, which is relatively low. However, the processing products, mainly lemon slices and drinks, have low added value and low profit, which squeezes the price of raw materials and makes it difficult to make the cost stable.

Our dehydrated lemon peels are processed with materials from Anyue, In Anyue the lemon planting area reaches more than 500 thousand mu, and the annual output of fresh fruit of lemon is 600 thousand tons. Its output, scale and market share account for more than 80% of the country.

Factories in China may raise the level of comprehensive utilization of high-quality resources and cultivate products widely used in cosmetic, pharmaceutical, light textile, flavor and fragrance, food processing and other industries on the basis of existing processed products, but the processing ability of lemon products currently is still relatively low, lemon are not widely used in industries here.
In summary, Insufficient processing capacity with planting scale expansion, are the main reasons for cheap lemon in recent years.