---
title: "Key Rectification and Cliff-Like Decline: Who Should Be Responsible for the Maca Market Collapse?!"
description: "On May 27, the China Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to launch a special campaign against illegal drug addition and illegal efficacy claims in health foods, prepared wines, and maca products, targeting maca marketed as a 'plant Viagra.' Since last year, maca raw material prices have plummeted, with yellow card bulb prices falling from 180 yuan per kilogram at the beginning of the year to 2 yuan by year-end, with no buyers. The combination of raw material market collapse and strict regulation makes the future of maca health products uncertain."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2016-06-12"
language: "en"
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# Key Rectification and Cliff-Like Decline: Who Should Be Responsible for the Maca Market Collapse?!

> On May 27, the China Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to launch a special campaign against illegal drug addition and illegal efficacy claims in health foods, prepared wines, and maca products, targeting maca marketed as a 'plant Viagra.' Since last year, maca raw material prices have plummeted, with yellow card bulb prices falling from 180 yuan per kilogram at the beginning of the year to 2 yuan by year-end, with no buyers. The combination of raw material market collapse and strict regulation makes the future of maca health products uncertain.

Editor's Note
On May 27, the China Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to launch a special campaign against illegal drug addition and illegal efficacy claims in three categories of food: health foods, prepared wines, and maca products. Maca, marketed as a 'plant Viagra,' became a key target for rectification. Since last year, maca raw material prices have experienced a 'cliff-like' decline, with yellow card bulb prices continuously falling from 180 yuan per kilogram (unit: kg, same below) at the beginning of the year to 2 yuan by year-end, still with no buyers. With the raw material market collapse and strict regulation, the future of maca health products is uncertain. Today, we have compiled and published two related reports, hoping to find a way out for the future maca market.

National Fickleness as the Soil
Health is closely linked to good long-term habits and consistent exercise, but people today have deviated from the natural human attribute of 'toughening the body'—they look at phones, play games, stay up all night, sit or lie for long periods, indulge in alcohol and sex, and neglect exercise. This has led to a general decline in public health, with 'national kidney deficiency' becoming the norm.
Faced with sub-health conditions, most people do not want to achieve recovery through restraint and hard work, but rather seek a 'miracle drug' to solve problems quickly. In fact, this mentality has deep cultural roots, as even emperors like Qin Shi Huang, Emperor Wu of Han, and Kangxi and Qianlong were not immune. Everyone wants to be like Guo Jing in Jin Yong's novels, who occasionally consumed Liang Zi Weng's snake blood and, after learning the Nine Yin Manual, immediately became strong, powerful, and long-lived.
Thus, health product myths such as Taiwanofungus camphoratus, maca, spirulina, black goji berries, Anoectochilus roxburghii, Dendrobium officinale, and even Ji Cao, Tai Yang Shen, and Nao Bai Jin emerged. These so-called 'miracle products' actually cater to people's desire for 'magic pills' and greatly satisfy the national fickleness.

Industrial Service Institutions as Accomplices
In the maca incident, various service institutions such as research institutions and agricultural extension departments cannot escape blame. These institutions, either due to academic naivety or greed, ignored market reality and blindly endorsed maca production. For example, since 2002, academicians have suggested promoting maca cultivation widely in western China, and in 2011, a research report from a Yunnan institution predicted that by 2015, domestic maca demand would exceed 100,000 tons!
These academic works, detached from production and market reality, clearly ignited confidence in maca development and acted as a 'fuse.'

Local Governments' Blind Pursuit of GDP Sowed the Seeds of Disaster
Since the reform and opening up, local governments have always taken pride in large-scale and numerous agricultural products when developing specialty agricultural economies. They demand scale, base, and 'contiguous fields' for any agricultural product, often creating 'ten-thousand-mu bases.' This approach is not wrong in itself, but preliminary market research is often superficial, and they blindly trust the one-sided words of individual experts or research institutions. They rush to follow current prices, making decisions for farmers or even forcing them to destroy existing crops, leading to serious 'exaggeration' and 'great leap forward' phenomena. This is more common in contiguous poverty-stricken areas eager to get rich, with more severe consequences.
Similar situations were common in the 1990s. I personally witnessed farmers in Lingao, Hainan, dumping Yizhiren at the township government gate in protest. But in the 21st century, more than a decade later, such administrative chaos and blind command, ignoring market reality, remain severe. For example, according to the Yunnan Provincial Office for Biological Industry Development's 'Opinions on Promoting the Orderly and Rapid Development of the Maca Industry,' it aims to 'by 2020, strive for 200,000 mu of maca planting area and 50 billion yuan in processing sales revenue.' Zhaotong City Government proposed to establish a local specialty brand and welcome the 'golden decade' of the maca industry. Lijiang City Government even set a goal and timetable to build the maca industry into a local 10-billion-yuan industry.

Media Cooperation in Hype, Overplaying 'Plant Viagra'
In the past five years, due to the crazy expansion of maca cultivation, maca seeds have become scarce. By early 2015, a kilogram of black maca seeds could be hyped to 80,000-100,000 yuan in Yunnan! With an acre producing 5-8 kilograms of seeds, selling seeds alone could yield hundreds of thousands of yuan per mu. Therefore, it is easy to understand why seed and seedling merchants fanned the flames—they simply exaggerated maca's bright prospects and huge consumer market to drive seed prices even higher.
Distributors and manufacturers became the next link in the 'passing the parcel' game. To sell their raw materials or products at sky-high prices, they also cooperated with the media to exaggerate and hype maca's magical effects, 'fooling' consumers into buying. The media were happy to oblige; as long as they were paid, what soft ads wouldn't they dare to run?
At this point, with both a fuse and sufficient explosives, and people fanning the flames, the huge 'bomb' of maca finally exploded violently. In an instant, it blasted the production areas into ruins, investors lost everything, and poor farmers were left in tears! But where are the experts, leaders, and merchants who were boasting on stage? Since it's such a good thing, shouldn't everyone get a few tons of maca to eat as food every day?

Can the Maca Industry Recover Its Glory?
Returning to Its Essence Is the Fundamental Way Out
Maca has come this far not only due to over-hyping but also because of its real effects. On one hand, experiments have proven that maca is rich in carbohydrates, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, alkaloids, glucosinolates, macamides, and macaenes, among other vitamins and nutrients, making it a truly dual-use product for medicine and food. On the other hand, maca is also a good functional ingredient. For example, in Lijiang and Zhaotong, Yunnan, maca has become a genuine local specialty, used in stir-fries, soups, stews, and hotpots; maca fresh leaves can be served cold, in soups, in hotpots, or stir-fried, and dried leaves can be used as animal feed.
However, compared to the profound traditional Chinese medicine, these effects are somewhat 'a pale comparison.' Similar selling points can be found in many traditional herbs. Therefore, the future of maca must shed its aristocratic status, return to its essence, return to the people, and become an affordable dual-use product for medicine and food—that is its fundamental way out.

Product Upgrading Is Another Path
Based on consumption habits of maca products in the circulation field, we have derived an analysis of domestic maca demand patterns. From Figure 5, it is clear that industrial products such as maca tablets and refined tablets dominate consumption, with raw maca fruits and slices ranking third and fourth.
According to online transaction records from Taobao Tmall, JD.com, and Zhongyao Caicheng Tong, it is also evident that maca industrial products occupy the main consumer market.
Therefore, we believe that in the industrial segment, there is still room for development in refined and high-end routes. For example, maca lozenges, refined tablets, pressed candy tablets, and maca wine can all be directions for maca product upgrading.

Image source: Internet
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