Translate to English: Dongfang Selection sells a corn for 6 yuan, is it making m

The recent "corn battle" has been quite popular, and I believe everyone is aware of it. Ever since New Oriental transitioned into live-streaming sales, one teacher has gained fame, and that is Dong Yuhui. His approach of blending knowledge with sales has given people a fresh experience. Consequently, Xin Ba, a top live-streaming salesperson, couldn't stay still and started to criticize, saying that Dong Yuhui's corn sales are too profit-driven. He claimed that they wholesale corn from farmers for only 70 cents per piece, but you sell it for 6 dollars. You're making money without a conscience.

Dong Yuhui immediately responded with four words: "Cheap grain hurts farmers." These words may seem sophisticated, but in reality, they are utterly confused!

Why do farmers only sell corn for 70 cents when Dongfang Zhixuan can sell it for 6 dollars, and Pang Donglai's supermarket sells it even more expensively, at 8.6 dollars per piece? Is it really because cheap grain hurts farmers? Has anyone considered why the same product has so many different prices?

Next, let's delve into the essence of the issue with Teacher Jiang: Now, we set aside personal emotions because the essence of business does not involve emotions; it only involves information asymmetry, and this information asymmetry is the profit for the merchants!

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Many people will surely feel indignant, saying that farmers are the most hardworking, so why do they only earn the least money? That's right, farmers are the most hardworking because they put in physical labor. Objectively speaking, labor can only earn the value of labor, but the price is not necessarily related to the intensity of labor; it is only related to scarcity!

Let me give an example: Wuyi Mountain is known for its tea production. If you buy tea directly from the tea farmers at the source, online, or in a physical store, would the prices be the same?

Isn't the price of tea the cheapest when you buy it directly from the farmers in bulk? So here comes the question, would you buy a corn directly from a farmer? Dong Yuhui's corn is sourced from the Northeast. Would you fly thousands of miles from your home to the Northeast just to buy a few corns? How much would the transportation cost be?

Furthermore, there's another issue: would you buy corn from a farmer or from a trusted supermarket? Isn't it the latter, because you trust the supermarket's quality control and selection capabilities, so you feel reassured to buy from the supermarket? Therefore, Pang Donglai can sell this corn for 8.6 dollars per piece. What Pang Donglai earns is the consumer's trust, and based on this trust, the brand premium produced is the merchant's profit. Dongfang Zhixuan is the same in this regard!

You might ask, is there any way to help farmers increase their profits? In fact, there is no way to increase the profit of a single product; only by increasing sales can farmers earn more money. There are theoretically two ways to increase sales:

First, if everyone eats a few more corns every day, then the demand for corn will increase. But here comes the problem: once the demand increases, the number of farmers growing corn will actually increase, and in the end, the income of farmers does not improve much.Second, according to data statistics, there are currently 540 million farmers in our country, with an average of 1.4 mu of arable land per person. If farmers want to increase their income, the only way is through industrial upgrading. Suppose 440 million of the 540 million farmers move to cities for work, leaving 100 million farmers. Wouldn't the average arable land per person increase by 4-5 times? Then, by implementing large-scale planting, wouldn't the yield also increase by more than 5 times? Consequently, wouldn't the income also increase by more than 5 times?

From the above two suggestions, the first one is not advisable because consumer demand is essentially constant and unchanging. Even if demand increases, the supply and demand relationship will quickly reach equilibrium again, and there will be no significant change in farmers' income. Only the second suggestion has some feasibility. By promoting urbanization and agricultural upgrading, we can increase the average arable land per farmer and improve production capacity through agricultural technology, which can lead to an increase in farmers' income. This direction is the new agricultural model that our country is exploring!