What three major problems can Internet Plus Agriculture solve?
On July 25, the 2015 Agricultural Products and Agricultural Industry Development Summit Forum was held in Beijing. Chen Xiaohua, Vice Minister of Agriculture, who attended the event, said that how to use advanced information technology to transform traditional agriculture, enable agriculture to achieve leapfrog development and rapid growth, thereby bridging the digital divide between urban and rural areas and keeping pace with industrialization, urbanization and informatization, is a major issue facing "Internet Plus Agriculture".
Chen Xiaohua believes that, based on existing practice, the use of Internet information technology can solve three problems in agriculture: first, the use of network technology to control the production and operation process. By developing precision agriculture and automated agriculture, it is possible to reduce waste, lower costs and improve efficiency, and thereby solve the problem of agricultural product traceability and ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products. Second, the use of network technology to serve agricultural operations and farmers' lives. Chen Xiaohua said, "Connecting dispersed small-scale production with the large market - the path of agricultural e-commerce is workable. It should be said that, in the world, China's agricultural product e-commerce is still ahead." Third, big data and cloud computing technologies can also be used to solve the problem of managing rural society.
"One very important point of 'Internet Plus Agriculture' is solving the question of how to 'plus'", Chen Xiaohua believes. When new technology is applied to agriculture, it creates an innovation-driven force, which will change the previous sources of momentum and add new momentum to agricultural development. "Internet Plus Agriculture" is a transformation of the backward model of agricultural development. Since it is a transformation, "Internet Plus Agriculture" is by no means simply connecting the Internet to agriculture, but rather requires a "chemical reaction" of industrial model innovation and leapfrog development, and so on.
Data show that currently, the number of agriculture-related e-commerce platforms in China is nearly 4,000, showing a trend of rapid growth, yet due to problems such as "a thousand networks looking the same", high costs and inconsistent standards, only 1% are profitable and 88% are losing money. According to the latest data from the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2015, China's Internet users reached 668 million, with an Internet penetration rate of 48.8%, among which rural Internet users accounted for only 27.9%.
As the main actors in this "Internet Plus Agriculture" transformation, farmers are limited by their level of knowledge. Whether they can "plus" into the Internet and how they "plus" into the Internet is the key to whether the Internet and agriculture can truly achieve deep integration. From instinctive resistance to the Internet to gradually simple and practical use, the Internet is still in the process of "taking root" in rural areas, and its real application in farmers' actual production and life still awaits further development.