Why are Gannan Navel Oranges, once a path to prosperity for farmers, now harder to grow?

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At the end of last year, Foodthink published an article titled “Bringing an Influencer Home to Sell Navel Oranges: Only Then Did I Realise How Hard Life Is for Fruit Farmers”. In the piece, Fengche, who works in Guangzhou, shares the story of her return home to help her family sell oranges, which in turn highlights various issues currently facing the navel orange industry, from production to sales.

In May this year, I had the opportunity to visit this mountain village, the home of the renowned “Gannan Navel Orange”. After speaking in depth with local farmers, I discovered that the very oranges that once paved the way to prosperity for these growers have become increasingly difficult to cultivate and even harder to profit from.

● By early May, the orange blossoms had almost entirely fallen, and small fruits were beginning to take their place.

I. Thirty Years of Rise and Fall with the Navel Orange

Despite being branded with the ‘Gannan’ geographical indication, navel oranges are not native to the region. This fruit, known scientifically as ‘Newhall’, is a hybrid variety first bred in the United States; it only took root in Xinfeng County, Jiangxi, after the 1970s, before gradually spreading to neighbouring counties and cities. The history of navel orange cultivation in Fengche’s village is even shorter. Around 1990, her uncle brought back the first batch of navel orange saplings from a neighbouring county, becoming the first in the village to take the plunge. Later, following family tradition, the orchard was taken over by her eldest brother.

It was only four or five years later that other villagers began to follow suit, having seen the profits the oranges could bring. When the household contract system was introduced, each family was allocated some woodland. In those days, there were no excavators or other heavy machinery; to plant their oranges, villagers had to rely on their own hands and the most rudimentary tools to gradually fell the existing trees and clear the land.

In the early stages of their promotion, navel oranges were primarily sold for export, and prices were naturally far higher than in the domestic market. As early as the 1990s, navel oranges could fetch over two yuan per jin. At the time, families also grew other fruit trees—such as honey peaches, Sanhua plums, and bayberries—but because navel oranges offered higher yields, were more resilient during storage and transport, and had stronger market demand, they eventually came to reign supreme.

●Navel oranges are long-lasting; even in the sweltering heat of May, one can still enjoy oranges kept over from winter.
As orange cultivation expanded, those in the village willing to grow them struck it rich. For that generation of fruit farmers, the memory of building new homes solely from the profits of orange sales remains vivid. However, as the market for navel oranges shifted towards domestic consumption and production grew, they faced relentless competition from an endless stream of new varieties and emerging growing regions. Navel oranges have since been “relegated” to the status of an ordinary fruit, and the market is no longer what it once was. Last year, the farm-gate price was around 2.5 yuan. In other words, while the price of navel oranges has remained largely unchanged over thirty years, expectations for income and the cost of production are worlds apart from those of the 1990s.

II. Huanglongbing and Decline Disease

In recent years, prices for navel oranges have actually fallen below those of the 1990s and early 2000s. However, because yields are so high, a stable price can still provide fruit farmers with a substantial income. The output of old navel orange trees is staggering; some of the larger trees planted in the nineties can produce as much as 1,000 jin of fruit. “If the yield is that high, you can still make money even if the oranges sell for one yuan,” said Fengche’s older brother.

At its peak, this small village of about thirty households could produce over 2 million jin of navel oranges; now, that figure has dropped to just over 1 million jin. The primary reason for this decline was the emergence of Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening, around 2010.

HLB is a fruit tree disease caused by phloem bacteria carried by psyllids. It is so named because the leaves of infected trees turn yellow. While the quality of the fruit deteriorates, the infected trees do not die immediately; instead, they wither slowly over several years, while the bacteria are spread to neighbouring trees by the psyllids. Furthermore, there are no pesticides on the market that can fundamentally cure HLB, leading it to be known as the “cancer of citrus”.

Due to its contagious nature, combined with the fact that the entire production area grew a single crop in contiguous plots, HLB spread rapidly. In Fengche’s orchard, for example, most of the trees are located by the roadside, adjacent to other orchards; about a third of these trees were eventually infected. A small remaining plot, however, is located deep in the forest. Although it is a long walk and inconvenient for harvesting, it proved to be a blessing in disguise: no diseased trees ever appeared there, and the harvests have remained consistently good.

● Some orchards plant cedar trees around their perimeter, which are said to act as a barrier.

Unfortunately, most orchards lack such natural physical barriers. Some growers choose to cover their trees with fine insect netting to prevent psyllids from reaching and infecting them. However, according to one grower, the cost of this method is significant; to cover an orchard of more than ten thousand square metres, he invested over a hundred thousand yuan in a single outlay. Consequently, while this practice has been adopted in other parts of Gannan, most local farmers are still reluctant to install the netting.

● Step inside the insect nets and you will realise that they are less like nets and more like greenhouses; the temperature inside can be two or three degrees higher than outside. The orchard owner told us that the netting degrades over time, affecting light penetration, and needs to be replaced roughly every five years.

Insect nets are merely a preventative measure; once a tree actually falls ill, the best solution is to fell it as quickly as possible to stop the pathogens from spreading. Around 2015, Citrus Greening (Huanglongbing) had become severe in the village. Because trees still produced some yield in the early stages of infection, some farmers were reluctant to cut them down. Consequently, the local government issued repeated warnings and mandates, requiring farmers to fell any tree showing signs of the disease. At one point, the government even mobilised staff from administrative offices to go into the countryside and help farmers cut down the trees.

Local government documents also mention that since 2012, the county has invested significant manpower and resources into controlling Citrus Greening. To date, the outbreak can only be described as ‘contained’, rather than completely eradicated. Although diseased trees are now rarely seen in the orchards, whispers of the disease still linger in the conversations of the farmers.

Of the more than 800 trees planted by the eldest brother, over 300 had to be felled and replanted; this is now the fifth year since then.

● Fengche’s mother is in the orchard; most of the small, newly planted trees before her are replacements for those lost to Citrus Greening.

However, new problems have begun to emerge with some of the newly planted saplings.

The eldest brother recalls that, initially, the quality of saplings on the market was inconsistent, and farmers often bought and sold them amongst themselves at local markets. It was only after the government began introducing superior stock that yields gradually increased. However, following the outbreak of Citrus Greening, and because saplings throughout the entire production area were potentially infected, the government had to source a new batch of seedlings from other regions. Yet, these external saplings carried their own viruses; before the old disease had even been eradicated, a new one arrived. Around 2017, a massive outbreak of decline disease occurred in the vicinity.

Decline disease is also contagious. Infected trees fail to grow tall and are referred to by locals as ‘small old trees’. Some farmers initially mistook this for a problem with the quality of the saplings, only later realising it was a disease. The virus impairs the transport of nutrients, leaving branches brittle and prone to snapping; even the main trunk can become as fragile as a twig, breaking with the slightest pressure. Even when diseased trees bear fruit, the oranges are small and misshapen. A 2011 survey by Gannan Normal University found that the infection rate of decline disease among navel oranges in the Gannan region was as high as 44.9%.

● Two trees planted in the same year: the one on the left suffers from decline disease, and its growth is markedly inferior to the healthy tree on the right.
Experience has shown that even government-designated nurseries cannot guarantee the health of their saplings. At present, decline disease has been detected in all the large nearby nurseries, and trust in the nursery market has evaporated. Local growers who have the means now rely on personal connections to source saplings from nurseries they trust.

III. Orchards Stalled by Decline Disease

On our second day in the village, we visited Fengche’s uncle. Unlike the elder brother, who has been growing oranges for over thirty years, the uncle is a newer grower; he spent his youth working away from home, only returning in 2017 to plant navel oranges. He is clearly a capable man, having previously risen to the rank of senior technician at a ceramics factory in Chaozhou. Currently, the orchard is managed entirely by him and his wife, working from dawn until dusk without fail. For convenience, they do not even return home at lunchtime, instead preparing simple meals in a nearby old house.

● The uncle standing in front of the old house.

“People here are hardworking; we’re out in the orchards even in a light drizzle. Only heavy rain gives us a break,” Fengche said.

The orchards truly never see a day’s rest. From spring until the harvest begins in November, fertilising, spraying, and tree maintenance keep the farmers occupied almost every single day. Once the picking season arrives, they are consumed by harvesting and selling, followed by pruning and clearing the land. In this whirlwind of activity, the Lunar New Year arrives once again.

Yet, despite such industry, some have lost hundreds of thousands of yuan on these navel oranges.

My uncle led us up the orchard hill. Looking around, the contrast between the new and old plantations was stark: several hilltops had been levelled into terraces by heavy machinery, and since the saplings were relatively new, the red earth beneath them lay exposed.

“Back then, our village was granted a quota for land reclamation, and these hills were converted into orchards. The village secretary planted over a thousand trees himself and made more than 500,000 yuan in a single year. Seeing his success, he encouraged us to return and lease our own plots,” my uncle recalled. Tempted by the prospect, he and his wife decided to invest all the savings they had amassed from years of migrant work, planting more than 1,700 navel orange saplings in one go.

As it happened, the village secretary’s success was not so easily replicated. My uncle had returned home just as “decline disease” was breaking out. Lacking experience in selecting saplings, every single one of the first 1,700 trees he planted became infected. It was difficult to spot the diseased trees in the first year, but by the second and third, the problems became apparent. There was no point in keeping trees that refused to grow; they had to be felled and replanted.

How many of those original, healthy saplings had actually survived until now?

“Practically none of them.”

This is now the sixth year since his return, and he has only just finished replacing the diseased saplings. It will take another three years or more before the new trees bear fruit. In other words, he has sold almost no oranges for the past several years. Despite this, he seemed remarkably optimistic.

“We didn’t even invest that much—we’ve only lost about 500,000 yuan. There was a deputy factory director who put in over two million.”

As he spoke, he brought out a few navel oranges stored over the winter to offer us.

“These grew on the trees with decline disease. I’ve kept them for ourselves.” The oranges tasted good, but they were undersized and wouldn’t fetch a decent price.

IV. The Rising Cost of Agricultural Supplies

To outsiders, my uncle seemed to have a real head for business. In front of the old house, he and his wife kept a good number of free-range chickens. He wanted to use the empty space for a side business, selling the birds to friends via WeChat to earn a bit of extra cash. When it came to navel oranges, my uncle’s philosophy was to “invest heavily”. At the agricultural supply store, he bought only the best pesticides and the finest fertilisers; fertiliser alone cost him around 15,000 yuan a year, to say nothing of the labour costs for spraying. During winter fertilisation, each tree required seven or eight jin of fertiliser; the most expensive brand he used cost over three yuan per jin, making it more costly than the citrus fruit itself.

● Inside the old house, my uncle showed us the receipts from the agricultural supply store over the last few months (top). Between February and May, he purchased 22 different products totalling 2,315 yuan, including 10 types of insecticides and 7 fungicides. Because so many chemicals were sprayed in a single batch, the store owner had marked the mixing order on the bottle caps.
● My uncle used a certain brand of fertiliser whose promotional materials claimed it could neutralise pH levels, add beneficial bacteria and organic matter, and supplement mid-to-micro elements. Ever the student, he is a typical consumer of these modern organic fertilisers—the more he learns, the more complex his knowledge becomes, and the more inputs he buys.
My uncle believes that to grow the best oranges, one must be willing to spend. His calculation was this: once the saplings matured, a single tree could produce 100 jin of fruit, selling for 250 yuan; with costs at 150 yuan, he would make a 100-yuan profit. But from Fengche’s perspective, the situation was far from ideal; investing as heavily as my uncle did made it very difficult to actually turn a profit. Even if the trees grew healthily, the risk would be even greater if prices fluctuated or if the weather caused a poor harvest. In fact, it wasn’t just my uncle’s family; nearby fruit farmers were all feeling the pinch of rising costs. Chemical fertiliser prices have risen year after year and pesticide use has increased. Fengche’s elder brother noted that because of the excessive use of chemicals, pesticide resistance is becoming more severe, and “specialist” drugs are becoming less effective. Today, inputs account for the majority of the cost of navel oranges, averaging around 1 yuan per jin—nearly double what it was before. Meanwhile, the price of the fruit has dropped from over three yuan to just over two.

Consequently, Fengche believes that helping farmers reduce their use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers could benefit everyone. Fengche’s younger brother makes his own liquid fertiliser at home and uses cow manure for composting, allowing him to replace some chemical and foliar fertilisers and reduce his costs.

V. Epilogue

Nowadays, the navel orange is no longer the most popular fruit on the market; all manner of newer, more expensive citrus varieties have left it in the dust. Yet most of the farmers we met remained optimistic. They didn’t envy the expensive, trendy new varieties; they simply hoped to grow their navel oranges steadily in their own orchards. Just as they had for the past few decades, making a modest, steady living would be enough. The story of the navel orange is not over yet. In a few days, I will return to the mountain villages to visit the local farmers again. For me, I want to know: why are farmers so keen to learn various new techniques? What is the relationship between the farmers and the fruit traders? More importantly, how can we best help the farmers?

Fengche has already taken action. Her organisation, the Shegeng Social Work Service Centre, has decided to launch a project locally, and they will soon hold a seminar on navel orange cultivation techniques. For Fengche and her colleagues, this is a small first step in helping the farmers. For an old producing region that has weathered many storms, perhaps it is time to breathe some new life into it.

References:

Tao Zhenzhen, Yi Long, Lu Zhanjun, et al. Investigation and Research on the Incidence of Citrus Decline Disease in the Main Production Area of Gannan Navel Oranges [J]. Chinese Agricultural Bulletin, 2011, 27(16): 297-300.

Foodthink Author
Wang Hao
Foodthink Editor, who often collects first-hand field stories and second-hand agricultural knowledge while travelling for work.

 

 

 

 

All images in this article are by the author

Editor: Tianle

Published by Foodthink