CABBAGE PRICE PLUNGE SPOILS HARVEST

[Anchor Lead]

With cabbage prices plunging in recent months, concerns are growing among farmers who are planning to put their produce on the market. In particular, farms who have signed entire-stock contracts with distributors are on the verge of giving up their harvest altogether.

[Pkg]

Harvest should be under way on this cabbage field. It's filled with bright green napa cabbages. One distributor was set to purchase the entire quantity of produce from this field in a lump sum deal. However the buyer abandoned the contract following a plunge in cabbage prices. The farmer is now desperately trying to find a new sale channel.

[Soundbite] Park Seung-myeong(Cabbage farmer) : "I expect a loss of over KRW 80 mn, fearing reimbursement cases over contract breach."

It's a similar situation at a nearby cabbage patch. Cabbage heads are plucked out from the ground with the roots exposed. The farm failed to sell the cabbages to a distributor and decided to just discard them with a cold wave approaching.

[Soundbite] Kim Moon-seok(Cabbage farmer) : "We can't do any work if the cabbages freeze, so they had to be plucked out in advance. It breaks my heart."

The distributor who signed a deal to buy the whole stock said he had no choice amid plummeting cabbage prices.

[Soundbite] (Intermediary Distributor(VOICE MODIFIED)) : "Given the purchase price of KRW 2.5 mn, the sale price needs to be around KRW 5 mn to make ends meet."

Two months ago, the average wholesale price of 10 kilograms of cabbage was 38-thousand won. With increasing supply, the price has fallen to one sixth of that level to around 6,000 won. Canceled purchase deals and lack of places to sell are pushing cabbage growers to discard their precious harvest.