What institutional and mechanism obstacles does the integrated development of rural industries face?

At present, the integrated development of the agricultural product processing industry and the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas faces a rare historical opportunity, but at the same time it should also be noted that the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural China is still at an early stage of development and still faces some development bottlenecks and institutional and mechanism obstacles. These mainly include:

First, the industrial linkage mechanism is still not sound. In the linkage between the primary and secondary industries, the degree of linkage between agricultural product processing enterprises and farmers needs to be strengthened. The benefit linkage mechanism between most enterprises and farmers has not yet been established, the connection between enterprises and agricultural bases is insufficient, and the effect of driving local farmers to increase their incomes is not obvious. The benefit linkage mechanism between the tertiary industry, represented by leisure agriculture, and farmers is even weaker. In some places, enterprises take away more industrial profits, while farmers still mainly sell primary agricultural products and find it difficult to share more of the profits from the secondary and tertiary industries, thus affecting farmers' enthusiasm for production and becoming a "bottleneck" constraining the development of leisure agriculture.

Second, there are constraints in the land and financial policy environment. First, the rural land management system is imperfect, which limits business entities in pursuing long-term development goals. On the one hand, the approaching expiration of contract periods shortens the effective period of land transfer, and business entities, out of uncertainty about land policy and the constraints of provisions, are unable to transfer land for the long term. On the other hand, the price formation mechanism of the land transfer market is complex and lacks institutional constraints, leading to the continuous and rapid rise of land rents. Second, the financing and loan system is inflexible, which restricts the operation and expansion of business entities. Taking agricultural product processing enterprises as an example, agricultural production is seasonal, and enterprises' purchase of agricultural products is correspondingly seasonal. They often need to complete within one or two months the centralized purchase of the raw materials needed for the whole year. Financial institutions lack reasonable lending channels to meet the short-term liquidity needs of processing enterprises, which limits the capital turnover capacity of processing enterprises, constrains the exercise of their production and operation capacity, and restricts their role in driving integrated development.

Third, the profit mechanism of agricultural e-commerce is not mature. First, the operating costs of e-commerce platforms are high. Participation in platforms requires paying certain management and use fees, and each year enterprises need to participate in various forms of gift and profit-giving activities, which are in fact disguised bidding, increasing operating and management costs and deterring small-scale agricultural enterprises. Second, e-commerce platform management is not standardized. Undesirable practices such as fake orders, rankings and bidding have intensified vicious competition, exposing participating enterprises to relatively high market risks. Third, the levels of trusteeship entities vary unevenly. Industry supervision is weak, and trusteeship entities are a mixed lot, leading to fraud in trusteeship operations and increasing business risks for enterprises. Fourth, self-built websites are weak in strength. Although self-built websites can save business costs to the greatest extent, they lack professional management teams and understanding of internet knowledge and technology, resulting in high entry thresholds for enterprises and poor operating efficiency. At present, e-commerce operations generally have more significance for advertising and publicity for enterprise distribution than for actual sales, and using online publicity to drive offline traditional channel sales is currently the only strategic choice for many enterprises.

Fourth, integrated development is highly dependent. First, integrated development is highly dependent on resource endowments. The existence of some comparative advantage in agricultural resource endowments is the basis for whether rural areas can achieve economic development, while various integration models are merely media for giving play to comparative advantages. Rural areas lacking distinctive agricultural resource endowments often find it difficult to succeed in integrated development and fall into the trap of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The key to breaking through in integrated development for major agricultural counties lies in how to use existing comparative advantages and, within the institutional framework, transform them into new industrial advantages conducive to their own development. Second, there is strong dependence on financial project support. Regions that need to be driven by integrated development often lag in economic development and rely deeply on financial support. In some areas, adverse selection has gradually formed around policy support, such as one cooperative hanging multiple signboards to obtain financial support. Traditional ways of financial support need to be changed, direct financial support should be diluted, and rule-making and supervision should be strengthened. Third, there is strong dependence on regional development planning. On the one hand, the integrated development of various business entities requires the government to build platforms, carry out industrial planning, and coordinate and make overall arrangements; on the other hand, agricultural processing clusters and agricultural tourism development often require prior investment in infrastructure such as transportation and communications, and have certain requirements for the level of socialized public services.