Qianjiang Evening News
February 26, 2009

Times are hard for China's orange farmers: market demand for the low-priced fruit has been low compared to an abundant supply, and many farmers have quite a bit of unsold stock. According to today's Qianjiang Evening News, a Zhejiang-based newspaper, the two cites of Lishui and Quzhou alone have are over half a million tons of oranges.

Even worse, the fruit will start to rot and stink as the weather begins to warm up.

A Lishui People’s Congress representative told the newspaper, "It's not just that the oranges cannot be sold. They've begun to rot. How we will deal with the rotten fruit is a big problem now....We hope that farmers can restrain themselves and stay calm, and not throw rotten oranges everywhere." Some farmers have chopped down their orange trees to make room for green vegetables.

Qianjiang Evening News previously reported that a university student whose family could not afford his tuition decided to give him five tons of tangerines in the hopes that he would be able to sell them in Hangzhou. Today's paper offers "expert advice" to other farmers: rotten tangerines can be used to make methane and organic fertilizer.

According to the head of Quzhou's Citrus Research Institute, "Although oranges are acidic, experiments have shown that they can actually be used as fertilizer. You can also mix them with calcium hydroxide to neutralize their acidity."