"Insurance + Futures" Gives Yantai Apples Financial "Wings"

China Securities News and China Securities Network—(Reporter Ma Shuang) Yantai apples are famous at home and abroad. But for Lin, a native orchard grower (a pseudonym), behind this glamorous name are years of hard work day after day, and even more the uneasy worry of having to “watch prices” year after year.

Lin has been getting his hands dirty in apple orchards since childhood, following his elders. He has a special attachment to this land. “The full trees of apples are like the hope we live by, carrying the fruit growers’ expectation for a harvest year after year,” Lin said.

More than ten years ago, Lin quit his job at the supply and marketing cooperative and resolutely embarked on a career in planting apples. He was not satisfied with the old ways of “living off the weather.” He stuck to dwarfing and high-density planting, scientific fertilization, and precise pruning, carefully managing every step of the apples’ growth. To help fellow villagers get rich together, he set up a cooperative in the village—building bases in a unified way, purchasing agricultural inputs, providing technical guidance—and also built standardized cold storage, registering multiple apple trademarks.

The government also gave the cooperative strong support: installing three-defense nets to prevent hailstorms and frost, improving water-and-fertilizer integrated drip irrigation facilities, and jointly with the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences developing “precise traceability technology for apple production information.” In extreme weather, this system can still ensure a relatively high rate of high-quality fruit.

Scientific planting and management have produced fruitful results. Today, the cooperative has developed to more than 500 households, and it has also helped more than 1,500 households in over 20 surrounding villages get rich together. In the cooperative, families with two laborers can manage 10 mu of apple orchards, with annual income exceeding 100,000 yuan.

However, Lin always has a hidden concern in his heart. “We can use three-defense nets to resist natural disasters and stabilize output, but we can’t decide the final selling price of apples,” he said. “Once apple prices fall sharply, all the hard work of a year could be completely wasted.”

Around the Qingming Festival in 2024, this worry became reality. In just a few months, the ex-warehouse price of apples fell from 4 yuan per jin to only a few dozen cents, and many fruit growers suffered losses. Lin’s cooperative avoided the lowest point of the price cycle thanks to its cold storage, but it still incurred many losses. “Fruit growers are understandably uneasy about large fluctuations in apple prices,” Lin said.

Just after New Year’s Day in 2025, Lin, along with more than a dozen cooperative members, went into the orchard to apply additional organic fertilizer to the apple trees. Right there in the fields, they encountered China Securities Construction & Investment Futures personnel who were visiting together with an insurance company.

The futures company recommended to Lin an apple “insurance + futures” arrangement—using the futures market’s reinsurance function to defuse the risk of price declines. When discussing his concern about apple price drops, Lin hoped to rely on the futures company’s professional strength to solve this “major worry” that had troubled them for years.

“After hearing the staff’s detailed introduction, all the cooperative members present were very interested,” Lin said. “I was even more excited than others—especially after hearing that ‘insurance + futures’ is a people-benefit policy supported and promoted at the central level, and also an extension of apples’ scientific planting—using scientific risk-management measures to safeguard apple selling prices.”

Not long after, the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange issued that year’s support policy for the apple “insurance + futures” program. Lin immediately organized a promotional meeting for cooperative members, inviting experts from the insurance company and China Securities Construction & Investment Futures to popularize “insurance + futures” knowledge, publicize the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange’s project policy, and the government’s fiscal support policy.

This time, the response was more enthusiastic than expected. Lin said that while learning the project details, cooperative members also cared whether there would be an “insurance + futures” project for corn or peanuts implemented in Yantai. Everyone hoped to make more and better use of such good tools and good policies.

Running from September 2025 through December, the program conveniently covered the crucial sales period after apple harvest. During this time, many cooperative members learned to read futures quotations. “In the upward trend of futures prices, we captured the market’s bullish expectations for apple prices. This added confidence when we negotiated purchase prices with traders,” Lin said.

That year, apple prices surged sharply. There wasn’t much in the way of program compensation, but Lin and the cooperative members didn’t feel like they were losing at all.

After the program ended, the futures company staff asked the cooperative members, “Even though the compensation was not high, do you have any complaints?”

Lin smiled and replied, “Most people in our cooperative have no complaints. When prices went up, we sold our apples at higher prices, and our overall returns improved.”

Lin said that not only did everyone have no complaints, they were also full of gratitude—thank the insurance company and the futures company, thank the government and the exchange, and thank national policies for providing fruit growers with opportunities to get rich, so ordinary people can plant apples with peace of mind.

After participating in the apple “insurance + futures” program, Lin felt even more secure. “We no longer fret over apple price fluctuations. We just need to plant apples well, manage and operate them calmly. With price hedging, the time for the cooperative to sell apples is more flexible. We don’t have to worry that when prices fall, we won’t be able to sell at a good price. And we don’t have to worry that cold storage space will be insufficient either. In the future, we can further expand the acreage planted,” he said.

Years of planting and operation have made Lin increasingly clear that scientific planting is not only about growing a good tree, but also about scientific management of the orchard, brand building and promotion of fruit, and scientific management and control of risks. Lin said, “‘Insurance + futures’ is an important part of scientific risk-management. It gives apple planting financial ‘wings,’ making the apple planting business increasingly prosperous.”

For the future of the orchard, Lin is full of confidence. “With ‘insurance + futures’ providing protection, the cooperative and orchard will have a brighter tomorrow,” he said.

In his vision, driven by “insurance + futures,” the cooperative connects traditional agriculture with modern finance, and will go further and further along the path of scientific development. He and the cooperative members will continue exploring, promoting more financial elements integrated into apple planting, so that the apple industry can grow vigorously under financial empowerment.

In fact, “insurance + futures” is like an invisible pair of wings, lifting up fruit growers’ “steady happiness.” Lin said that with these financial “wings” protecting them, the cooperative and orchard will surely fly to even broader skies and contribute more to rural revitalization.

【Source: China Securities News · China Securities Network】