Agricultural e-commerce frequently receives policy bonuses, three ministries and commissions issue three documents in one month in strong support
Recently, the State Council and ministries and commissions successively issued three major heavyweight documents within one month, strongly supporting the development of agricultural e-commerce. The policy focus is to advance agricultural e-commerce centered mainly on “agricultural products” and agricultural production materials.
On September 24, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the Development of Agricultural E-Commerce," clarifying the overall goals for the next 3 years. It proposed that by 2018, the infrastructure conditions for agricultural e-commerce will be noticeably improved, the institutional system and policy environment will be basically sound, a number of agricultural e-commerce enterprises and brands with important influence will be cultivated, the proportion of e-commerce in the circulation of agricultural products and agricultural production materials will rise markedly, and its role in improving the market circulation system for agricultural products and agricultural production materials, boosting consumer demand, and prospering urban and rural economies will be significantly enhanced.
Before this, a series of policies supporting agricultural e-commerce had already been introduced. On August 21, the Ministry of Commerce and 19 other departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Rural E-Commerce." The main task proposed in the opinions is to advance e-commerce for rural products, including agricultural products, various handicrafts and manufactured goods from rural production, and rural tourism, so as to increase the commercialization rate and the proportion of e-commerce transactions; to develop e-commerce for agricultural production materials, and encourage various e-commerce platforms to rely on the existing rural network channels and sites of various departments to carry out e-commerce for production materials such as chemical fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, and agricultural machinery.
Subsequently, at the end of August, the "Opinions on Promoting the Modernization of Domestic Trade Circulation and Creating a Rule-of-Law Business Environment" issued by the State Council also particularly emphasized promoting the development of agricultural product e-commerce, guiding more agricultural practitioners and agriculture-related enterprises to participate in agricultural product e-commerce, supporting all localities in building distinctive agricultural product e-commerce industrial chains, and opening new channels for agricultural product circulation.
In the short span of one month, three major heavyweight documents were issued to support agricultural e-commerce, which shows the policy “favor” toward agricultural e-commerce. In fact, this is not the first wave of policy “bonuses” that agricultural e-commerce has received this year.
A Shanghai Securities News reporter reviewed the materials and found that as early as May this year, the State Council and ministries and commissions had already sent a round of “bonuses” to agricultural e-commerce. On May 7, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Vigorously Developing E-Commerce and Accelerating the Cultivation of New Economic Drivers," emphasizing the active development of rural e-commerce and encouraging enterprises producing agricultural production materials to develop e-commerce. On May 14, Treasury officials revealed that the central government would allocate 2 billion yuan in special funds this year for rural e-commerce infrastructure construction. Just the next day after the Ministry of Finance made its statement, the Ministry of Commerce issued the "Internet Plus Circulation Action Plan," announcing a strong push for e-commerce into rural areas.
The reporter also learned from the Ministry of Agriculture that developing agricultural e-commerce is one of the Ministry of Agriculture's 20 key tasks this year, emphasizing the need to make full use of the information-into-villages-and-households platform to carry out pilots for direct product delivery to urban communities and agricultural production materials going to the countryside.
Behind the intensive introduction of policies is the broad prospect of agricultural e-commerce. Luo Wensheng, vice president of “Kingenta” company, pointed out in an interview with a Shanghai Securities News reporter that the agricultural materials market is huge, and the market size of just the three main categories of agricultural materials, namely chemical fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides, is as high as 960 billion yuan, so the agricultural materials e-commerce market has broad prospects.
At present, leading enterprises in China's agricultural materials sector have long begun to enter e-commerce business, such as Stanley and Kingenta, which lead in all aspects among compound fertilizer companies, “Dabeinong,” which leads in marketing team scale and has relatively good balance between revenue and profit in the feed industry, and “Noposion,” the only company whose main business is pesticide formulations.