I received the latest edition of “Gendai-Nogyo”, Monthly Community Magazine for Farmers. I am not doing for agricultural business currently, but I have plans about how to get profits from agricultural land and forest which my father will inherit.
Main theme for this month is about “how did farmers sell their products in COVID-19 ?”. Some farmers had sold ones to schools, restaurants, direct sales places before this pandemic. However, during pandemics, they couldn’t distribute ones into these sales channels, were forced to sell ones into other channels instead.
Urban people including me must have different perspective from this magazine’s view, because agricultural product prices in grocery stores drastically increased by about 30 percent in my impression.
The reason of price gap above is by different sales channel, because grocery stores will basically purchase agricultural products from large distributors such as JA” Japan Agricultural Cooperatives”. During COVID-19 pandemic, most of people who had eaten out were forced to cook by themselves, who bought agricultural products sold in grocery stores. Demand increased for stable supply because the farmers in this magazine avoid supplying to large distributors taking large margin. Therefore, prices increased by imbalance between demand and supply.
In order for producers and consumers to be satisfied with, it is very important to increase independent sales channels of large distributor. Direct sales to consumers and package products among producers are examples to have solutions. Diversification will be protection also for future pademics, as there is proverb in stock investment “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”.