Fresh Ideas and Methods for Building a New Agricultural Ecosystem

After the term “Internet Plus” proposed at the 2015 Two Sessions became hugely popular, every industry was brewing cross-sector integration with the Internet, and even the oldest and most traditional agriculture was no exception. Unexpectedly, “Internet Plus agriculture” was the first to grab the policy bonus.

Entering 2015, the state issued a series of policies related to “Internet Plus agriculture”. For example:

On February 1, 2015, the No. 1 Central Document, “Several Opinions on Increasing the Intensity of Reform and Innovation and Accelerating Agricultural Modernization,” was officially released. The document clearly stated: “Innovate the circulation methods of agricultural products, support e-commerce, logistics, commerce and trade, finance and other enterprises in participating in the construction of agriculture-related e-commerce platforms, and carry out comprehensive demonstrations of e-commerce entering rural areas.”

On May 8, 2015, the State Council issued the “Eight National Measures on E-commerce,” and the central government planned to allocate 2 billion yuan in special funds for rural e-commerce infrastructure construction to strengthen the integrated development of the Internet and agriculture.

On August 21, 2015, in order to implement the decisions and arrangements of the Central Committee and the State Council, improve the modern rural market system, promote the modernization of rural circulation, improve rural circulation efficiency, and release rural consumption potential, the Ministry of Commerce and 19 other departments jointly formulated the “Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Rural E-commerce,” which was also the first document to comprehensively deploy rural e-commerce development.

The occurrence of this series of events gave rise to numerous agriculture-related opportunities. In fact, starting in 2014, under the promotion of the Ministry of Commerce and other departments, attempts to combine the Internet with agriculture had already begun.

At the end of October 2014, Alibaba launched the “Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages” plan, rolled out the rural online trading platform——Rural Taobao, and stated that in the next 3 to 5 years it would invest 10 billion yuan in the construction of 1,000 county-level operation centers and 100,000 village Taobao service stations.

In 2015, JD.com launched the “county-level service center” and regarded it as a lever to pry open a new market. On August 15, 2015, the JD Agricultural Materials Channel was officially launched, selling agricultural materials such as pesticides, farm tools, and fertilizers in addition to home appliances, daily necessities, digital products and other products, becoming China's first comprehensive e-commerce company to self-operate agricultural materials products.

In March 2015, Legend Holdings made a lightning investment in Cloud Farm in Jiaxiang County, Jining, with an investment amount reaching the level of tens of millions of US dollars. Compared with Legend Holdings' previous investment projects, Cloud Farm's business was completely channeled down to rural areas, with a business scope covering rural e-commerce, rural logistics, agricultural technical services, and rural finance, and covering rural areas in more than a dozen provinces including Shandong, Jiangsu, and Henan, with more than 200 county-level service centers and more than 16,000 village-level sites.

At present, “Internet Plus agriculture” has penetrated into every link of the agricultural industry chain, including production, processing, and sales. Although the emerging Internet and traditional agriculture appear to be quite far apart, they have unleashed huge potential. There are more than 3,000 agriculture-related websites nationwide, and there are as many as several hundred Taobao villages across Hebei, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong and other places, driving an even larger scale of entrepreneurial groups.

It can be said that “Internet Plus agriculture” has already become a revolutionary industrial model innovation. Under the comprehensive promotion of the Internet, the most traditional agriculture will also radiate strong vitality, and amid the overall economic slowdown, it will become a new economic growth point. In such a broader environment, it is very necessary to create a book themed on “Internet Plus agriculture” to provide guidance for the vast number of agricultural entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers.

Regarding agriculture, there is a proverb: “Whether there is a harvest or not depends on water; whether the harvest is large or small depends on fertilizer.” Today's Internet, for agriculture, is like “water” and “fertilizer,” and will inject strong vitality into agriculture and determine the prospects for agriculture's future development.