Internet Plus agriculture advances steadily along the Belt and Road
During the Han and Tang dynasties, when Chinese and European merchants shuttled back and forth along the ancient Silk Road, food was not only the source of life that supplied the caravans, but also a window through which people learned about the cultures of the countries along the route, and the seeds of food were also an important way to improve regional agricultural products. Along this Silk Road, Chinese tea ultimately reached Europe via the Silk Road, while crops from the Western Regions such as grapes, carrots, pepper, cucumbers and pomegranates also spread to the Central Plains, enriching the variety of foods and drinks in people's daily diet. This was the earliest form, within this economic belt, of Chinese agriculture “going out” and “bringing in”.
Today, with the Internet developing at high speed, and with “Internet Plus” having risen to the status of a national strategy, the “Belt and Road” refers not only to land routes and sea routes, but should also include today's Internet Silk Road. In other words, the advanced technologies and models of the Internet should become an important means and a core engine for Chinese agriculture to “go out” under the “Belt and Road”.
As is widely known, the Belt and Road economic belt involves 38 countries and regions including Central Asia, West Asia and Eastern Europe, covers a population of nearly 3 billion, and has a market scale that is unmatched anywhere. As a major agricultural country, China has enormous cooperation potential in this field. Through the land and sea routes of the “Belt and Road”, China will expand the export of its agricultural products, provide broader market prospects for agricultural development, and open the door of convenience for Chinese agriculture to go global. This is a major opportunity for China to develop modern agriculture and brand agriculture.
However, while facing great opportunities, China also has many deep-seated problems hidden in agricultural production. For example, modernized agricultural production lacks scientific management methods, agricultural laborers are too dispersed, logistics is inconvenient, agricultural market information is not smooth and information is blocked, and so on. In addition, in actual production the vast number of farmers also face problems such as expensive agricultural inputs, a single sales channel for agricultural products, and being unable to get a good price. These factors not only restrict the modernized development of China's agriculture, but also mean that, standing before the great opportunity of the “Belt and Road”, it is impossible to quickly create a situation in which agriculture “goes out”, and impossible to let the policy dividends benefit more agricultural people and agricultural production areas more deeply. At this time, “Internet Plus”, as a tool for cross-sector integration that connects everything, can provide a variety of solutions for Chinese agriculture to “go out”, from top-level design to practical application.
We use the Internet to link up the chain of agricultural modernization, combining the full industrial chain of “pre-production, mid-production and post-production” to build a complete Internet agriculture ecosystem. We let advanced elements such as information, technology, finance and logistics penetrate into every link, including the circulation of agricultural inputs, the trading of agricultural products, agricultural technical services, agricultural insurance and rural finance, and fully integrate all the attributes and functions of the Internet with the links of the agricultural ecosystem. In this way we rebuild the rural ecosystem, let more agricultural people enjoy the dividends of the “Internet Plus” era, and, by leveraging the advantages of professional technology, channels and brands, dig out the surplus value in each link of the industrial chain to achieve win-win results and development.
Taking advantage of this China-Arab States Expo, in the future some good agricultural input enterprises from Arab countries, such as suppliers of fertilizer, seeds and agricultural machinery, can sign import agency contracts with domestic agricultural enterprises. The domestic agricultural enterprises will have full authority to carry out online and offline promotion, facilitate transactions and provide after-sales service, so that the agricultural input brands of Arab countries can quickly spread in the Chinese market, thereby forming an optimized allocation of world resources and, while meeting the needs of China's agricultural development, also driving the development of agricultural input enterprises in Arab countries. Many of China's advantageous resources can likewise be procured and exported with the assistance of domestic agricultural enterprises, meeting the demand of Arab countries for precious resources, giving full play to the two-way channel of “going out” and “bringing in”, and achieving communication, win-win results and mutual benefit. Through the continuous development and cooperation between domestic agricultural enterprises and the countries of the “Belt and Road”, we provide broader technical support for Chinese agriculture to “go out” and create the conditions for establishing deep cooperative relationships with more enterprises.
The core of the “Silk Road spirit” is connection and communication, exchange and cooperation, and the essence of the Internet is likewise cross-sector integration that connects everything. Agriculture “going out” under the Belt and Road is not merely about going overseas to “farm the land”, nor is it simply about selling our agricultural products or letting Chinese farmers buy foreign agricultural inputs. It is, moreover, about incorporating the upstream and downstream agricultural industrial chain into the overall layout of agriculture “going out”. The value of “going out” lies not only in trade output and communication and exchange, but also in the output of technology, models and values. The mission of agricultural Internet enterprises in this process is to use the advanced model of the Internet to provide agricultural services and, through this concept of building an ecosystem for the entire agricultural industrial chain, to let the world see that China is not only a major agricultural country but also a newly rising agricultural power, and to win worldwide recognition for China's agricultural value system.