How much room for imagination is there in agricultural product traceability? Local governments endorse safety
Industrial products use traceability codes to enhance interactive marketing, and gain big consumer data through one code per item; agricultural products use traceability codes to have local governments endorse their safety, and hope to raise their added value, as well as open up e-commerce channels for local specialty products
Reported by Ma Li, reporter of Oriental Outlook Weekly / Beijing
“We are putting traceability codes on the products.” Fan Wei, from Yanji City, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, told Oriental Outlook Weekly that Jilin Zhongxin Green Rice Industry Group Co., Ltd., where he serves as sales director, joined Alibaba Group's Mantianxing (Starry Sky) “Light Up China” traceability plan through matchmaking by the Yanbian municipal government.
⟦NL> With more than ten years of rice-growing experience, they currently have contracted order area of over 5,000 hectares. Although this time it is only a pilot, they still put out 100,000 jin of Pinggang rice, “20,000 bags of 5-jin grain, all with traceability codes attached.” Fan Wei said.
And this rice with traceability codes is not only sold on Taobao, but also sold nationwide through local agents.
On one hand, counterfeit industrial goods keep emerging, and agricultural product food safety incidents occur frequently; on the other hand, the rapid development of e-commerce and big data is causing traditional sales models and channels to undergo profound changes. Product traceability has emerged as a result.
Traceability technology is being upgraded and improved. For agricultural products, local governments and enterprises hope to use it to increase product added value, open up e-commerce channels for local specialty products, and even drive the development of local tourism. And for local e-commerce enterprises and leading agricultural product enterprises, this project, hand in hand between internet giants and the government, is also forcing them to change.
Five-party linkage
To increase the visibility and added value of agricultural products, what ranks before taste must be safety, such as pesticide residues, additives, and even various possible hormones.
Alibaba Group launched the Mantianxing “Light Up China” plan, hoping to work through local governments to jointly endorse the safety of local agricultural products.
Cooperation with counties requires multi-party linkage. Taking Dawa County, Panjin City, Liaoning Province as an example, five-party linkage is needed: the Dawa County government leads, integrating resources from the Quality Supervision Bureau, Tourism Bureau, Animal Husbandry Bureau, E-commerce Industrial Park Management Committee and other parties; Alibaba provides the platform, traffic, resources and e-commerce-related training; Hangzhou Oracle Technology Co., Ltd. provides technical support; Liaoning Jinshe Yunong E-commerce Co., Ltd. integrates the entire operation, packaging and promotion, and online sales process; the selected local leading enterprises provide specialty agricultural products.
“Alibaba + local government + technology provider + operator + local enterprises” is precisely the basic model of the Mantianxing plan's cooperation with counties on specialty products.
In an open ecosystem, counties and relevant companies connect directly, and Alibaba only needs to integrate from the rear, with more work still being to guide consumers to scan codes with their mobile phones. In actual operation, Alibaba will recommend relevant technical operators according to local characteristics. And some county cooperation is facilitated by operating companies that already have cooperation or contact with Alibaba.
At present, there are 16 counties cooperating with Mantianxing, and it is expected that 50 to 100 counties will sign cooperation agreements by the end of 2015.
“In March 2015 we went to Alibaba, and everyone had a very strong consensus on agricultural product traceability.” said Liu Yang, director of the Dawa County E-commerce Industrial Park Management Committee. Afterward, Alibaba sent people to Dawa County for an on-site inspection and felt that the local agricultural foundation and environment were good, the quality inspection department could also connect, and production area plans and production records had been established, so a traceability tracking system could be made, making it very suitable as the first county for agricultural product traceability. This was the beginning of Alibaba's agricultural product traceability work.
How much safety
The first task after confirming cooperation is product selection. Each county will choose suitable varieties according to its own local characteristics and the testing data of the quality inspection department over the years.
“First, from more than 50 products, through e-commerce logistics testing, products with poor customer experience and unsuitable for online sales are screened out, and then the quality standards of agricultural products are reviewed, and products from local leading enterprises are selected as pilots. Because they have corresponding follow-up systems for product supervision and traceability, and once problems arise they can be solved.” Liu Yang said.
As for Yanji City, the service provider Beijing New Agriculture Business School bridged Yanji City and Alibaba. “Beijing New Agriculture Business School conducts market-oriented screening of our products, and then the government, based on their list, works with the Quality Supervision Bureau to compare data and conduct a second screening.” Wang Bing, assistant to the director of the Yanji City Commerce Bureau, told Oriental Outlook Weekly.
Alibaba's advice to counties is usually: just choose 10 single products. Too many categories will lack guidance and make consumers too blind.
This time Yanji selected 10 products representing Korean ethnic characteristics, including Pinggang rice, pollack, Kumgangsan kimchi, Korean ethnic cold noodles, and ecological black fungus.
For Fan Wei, they have operated in the form of contract farming since 2004. For more than 2,000 grower households in nearly 20 villages, they have been constantly adjusting processes and standards. From fertilizer storage to pesticide control, they have established their own standards system, “when it is time to fertilize, dedicated personnel will guide the farmers.”
In Dawa, which had already entered the second phase of cooperation in June 2015, the initial 10 selected products had long been exceeded, and more local agricultural products entered Taobao's “Special China” channel, with a “Dawa Pavilion” set up.
In the first phase, everyone needed to organize the data usually collected and discuss what information consumers wanted to know.
In the Dawa Pavilion Guanghe Crab Industry experience store, in addition to the earliest clams, seafood such as drunken crab, river crab, and sea cucumber have also gradually gone online. By scanning codes with mobile phones, consumers need to see information such as the product's growing base, breeding and processing process, product nutritional value and manufacturer.
Cai Yuan, manager of the store, told Oriental Outlook Weekly: “River crabs are alive when packed, which is relatively hard to control. Other products do not have problems with online sales.”
When the Dawa Pavilion reached the second phase, it brought in a third-party testing and certification agency——TUV Rheinland Testing and Certification Services (China) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Rheinland), which, in addition to the local quality inspection department, again tested and certified the agricultural products sold.
Jiang Tinggen is the curator of the Dawa Pavilion and comes from Liaoning Jinshe Yunong E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jinshe Yunong), which is responsible for the operational part of this cooperation. He told this magazine: “After news spread that Dawa County had become the country's first pilot county, Rheinland took the initiative to contact us.”