The Price Per Pound of Citrus Fruit

The following is taken from an editorial in a local newspaper: "Over the past decade, the price per pound of citrus fruit has increased substantially. Eleven years ago, Megamart charged 15 cents a pound for lemons, but today it commonly charges over a dollar a pound. In only one of these last 11 years was the weather unfavorable for growing citrus crops. Evidently, then, citrus growers have been responsible for the excessive increase in the price of citrus fruit, and strict pricing regulations are needed to prevent them from continuing to inflate prices."

In this editorial, author concludes that growers ought to be responsible for the excessive increase of the citrus fruit’s price and government has to publish some pricing rules to control the inflation prices of citrus fruit. To prove his argument, he provided the fact that the price of lemon has gone up from 15 cents per pound to 1 dollar during an 11-year period and points out that the weather that has the negative influence on the citrus growth is the only reason for excessive inflation of citrus fruit. This argument is flawed for several reasons. The reasons are as follows:

First of all, author commits the fact that all things are equal. He compares the price of Lemon nowadays with the price 11 years ago without considering the time value and inflation. Author ignores inflation and the inflation of lemon price might be one of most important reasons for continuous increasing price. For example, people only earn 100 dollars per week and the price of lemon is 15 cents a pound while nowadays Megamart sells lemon 1 dollars per pound and the weekly salary for common people may be approximate 800 dollars. Thus, the increase of the lemon price is not sound evidence to draw the conclusion that citrus growers should take the responsibility for the excessive increasing price of citrus fruit. In addition, in spite of assuming that there is no inflation, the present value of 11-year-ago price ought to be used to compare with the current price.

Secondly, the evidence that author provides is about the change of lemon’s price in Megamart. The sample size is not huge enough to support the conclusion and be representative. Author only mentioned the prices of lemon in Megamart, while the data of the price of lemon in other supermarkets and the prices of other citrus fruits are is not shown in the editorial. Lacking of information about the price of citrus fruits in the whole market, it is impossible to access the validity of the result.

In addition, author regards weather, which influences the production quality and quantity of citrus crop, as the only factor that leads to the extreme increase of the prices of the citrus crops. However, there are still some other factors that could cause the price increase, such as the increasing demand of clients, increasing labor cost and production costs, inflation and so on. For instance, facing the condition that labor cost, tool fee and the manure cost have gone up extremely, farmers have to increase their selling prices of fruit to earn profit or survive from the intense competition. Thus, it could not easily consider that growers have to take full responsibility for the price growth.  

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