“Recently, Bai Shao (白芍) has been moving quickly, with prices rising by fifty cents.”;
“I think it’s a good time to buy Bai Shao; the prices are too low, and you can see that the stock is starting to move.”;
“I feel that Bai Shao still won’t rise; the inventory is still too high, and the area planted in other regions is too large.”;
“This year, it’s really hard to find good quality Bai Shao slices; there are too many that are ‘exploded’ (炸心).”……
In recent days, the topic of Bai Shao has been increasingly discussed, with everyone having their own opinions and judgments. The discussion mainly revolves around the future of Bai Shao and whether the opportunity has truly arrived. Currently, the reason Bai Shao has become the focus of attention is its extremely tempting price. Last year, the price of tail Bai Shao dropped to a low of 2.8 yuan, which is unprecedented in the past decade.
In 2016, it was 5.5 yuan; in 2017, 5 yuan; in 2018, 4.3 yuan; and in 2019, 3.5 yuan. These are the trading prices of fresh Bai Shao over the past four years. The price has consistently dropped during the harvest season, which has become the norm for Bai Shao in recent years. The continuous decline in prices has caused great distress for Bai Shao growers. Planting Bai Shao for four to five years on one mu of land yields an average annual income of only a few hundred yuan. If not managed well, poor growth can lead to losses that exceed labor costs. It is often more profitable to rent land, which is heartbreaking for farmers. When farmers lose money, it marks the beginning of a poor market trend. Have you not seen that the Bai Shao seedlings that have nowhere to go have already entered the poor market sequence ahead of time?
Looking at the situation of Bai Shao, positive news is indeed emerging continuously, and the optimists are increasing their stakes.
In recent years, the government’s control over the quality of Chinese medicinal materials has been unprecedented. Many years of old Bai Shao have become undesirable due to loss of content and changes in color, making them like a pile of waste that no one dares to touch. The Bai Shao “dog head slices” that do not meet the standards have been banned from trading and rejected by many manufacturers. The history of winning the market through inferior or counterfeit drugs is long gone.
Similarly, under the dual pressure of environmental protection regulations, the initial processing of fresh Bai Shao (打花子点) has been overly focused on centralization, speed, and yield, leading to a common increase in Bai Shao with ‘exploded hearts’, further widening the price gap between Bai Shao for medicinal slices and Bai Shao for pharmaceutical companies. Bai Shao is transitioning from being inexpensive and good quality to being high quality and high price. Good quality goods are hard to find at high prices, while poor quality goods are abundant at low prices. At the same time, color sorting machines are widely used for screening Chinese medicinal materials, and the Bai Shao tail materials that cannot be used as medicinal slices are almost entirely used as raw materials for pharmaceutical companies. This is why the current price of Bai Shao for pharmaceutical companies is so low, while the price of Bai Shao for medicinal slices remains high.
This is the result of changes in the entire market environment in recent years, where good quality, new products, and genuine products have become the norm in market demand.
Invisibly, the demand has been amplified, while on the other hand, the continuously declining prices have gradually destroyed farmers’ confidence in planting Bai Shao. It is undeniable that if this continues, the collapse of production is only a matter of time, or the production of Bai Shao is on the path to collapse. This is also the reason why optimists are optimistic about Bai Shao.
It is also necessary to be vigilant that Bai Shao, as a tourism product, has external regions developing its cultivation without proper management, along with countless invisible inventories. When everyone is optimistic, and the farmers have not yet given up, is this another battle between the ‘spear and the shield’? In dealing with this battle, no one can predict the future; we can only find answers from history. This is merely a game of left hand versus right hand, revealing the level of a person’s cognition and wisdom.
【Writing is not easy, remember to share!】
（Original information, copyright protected by law）
