E-commerce Gives Agricultural Product Sales Wings to Soar

Editor's Note In recent years, e-commerce has become a new platform for rural youth to start businesses and find employment, and a new way for farmers to increase their incomes, especially playing a unique role in solving the difficulty of “selling” agricultural products. Many readers have written in saying that agricultural product e-commerce has broad prospects, but at present there are still problems such as a lack of talent, poor logistics, and lagging standardization, and that laws and regulations supporting the construction of an agricultural product e-commerce system should be introduced as soon as possible, the construction of an agricultural product standards system should be further accelerated, so that agricultural products can catch the e-commerce “express train”.

Unsold Agricultural Products Look to E-commerce for Relief

⟦NL> Since the start of summer, the watermelons in Liangduo Town, Dongtai City, Jiangsu Province, have enjoyed a bumper harvest. But unexpectedly, this year the watermelons have seen low prices and poor sales; the watermelons in the fields are already ripe, yet at just a few mao per jin few people are asking for them, and the melon farmers have run into the awkward predicament of “a bumper harvest without a rise in income”.

The poor sales and low prices of watermelons are related to the fact that this year there has been more rainy weather, the climate has been cool, and residents' demand has not been high. But there is another important reason, namely poor information and logistics, which has led to agricultural products in some places being sold off cheaply yet still not selling, while in other places people want to buy but cannot get the goods. To solve this problem, the channels of information and logistics must be opened up. In the “Internet Plus” era, the internet is undoubtedly the most convenient channel of communication. But at present, our market towns and most villages have not yet set up agricultural product e-commerce service points. If rural agricultural product e-commerce service points were more numerous and the agricultural products produced by local farmers caught the e-commerce service “express train”, the products would be sold to more places, and farmers would thereby increase their incomes.

To let more people eat fresh, safe agricultural products and let agricultural products sell for a “good price”, speeding up agricultural product marketing and promoting the construction of rural agricultural product e-commerce service points has become an urgent task. All localities should introduce supporting policies, encourage supply and marketing cooperatives, post offices, and courier companies to set up agricultural product e-commerce service points in township market towns and central villages where conditions are ripe, forming a rural e-commerce service network. At the same time, against the current background of rural youth returning home to start businesses, farmers' training and education can be combined with e-commerce development, using various means and methods such as vocational farmer training and college student entrepreneurship training to speed up the cultivation of rural e-commerce talent, and young people with aspirations should be encouraged to engage in e-commerce entrepreneurship. In addition, local media should also widely publicize agricultural product e-commerce services, expand their visibility, and raise the marketing rate of agricultural products. (Zhu Ting, People's Congress Office of Liangduo Town, Dongtai City, Jiangsu Province)

Open Up the “Last Mile” of Agricultural Product Sales

In recent years, agricultural product e-commerce has developed rapidly in various places, but according to the author's research in rural areas, at present agricultural product e-commerce still faces quite a few difficulties.

First, there is a lack of agricultural product e-commerce enterprises of the physical-industry type. The poor sales of summer fruits and vegetables have long been a major “chronic disease” of the agricultural product circulation industry. Looking into the reasons, apart from factors such as farmers' overly high expectations for agricultural product prices and farmers' lack of knowledge about selling agricultural products online, a more important reason is that various places lack leading physical-industry-type agricultural product e-commerce enterprises.

Second, the agricultural product quality standardization system is not sound. Now, many agricultural products have no unified standards and have not formed brands, so their sales are restricted.

Third, “last mile” logistics has become a bottleneck. Agricultural products are fresh and alive, perishable, and not resistant to storage and transport, requiring special storage, distribution, and transportation conditions. But at present, rural cold-chain logistics is not yet mature, and shortcomings in the level of cold-chain technology and the circulation and distribution system have become a bottleneck restricting online trading of agricultural products.

To solve these difficulties, first of all a village-level information network system must be built as soon as possible. All localities should create a policy environment for diversified investment, and in line with the principle of “whoever invests, benefits”, broaden investment and financing channels and encourage and guide social forces to invest in the field of agricultural information services. They should develop and integrate a rural market information collection system, integrate rural market information resources, and establish a rural market information analysis and forecasting system. On this basis, they should strive to build a rural market information database, ultimately meeting the requirements of networked operation and resource sharing both vertically and horizontally. Second, by implementing the cooperative production and operation model of “leading enterprise + farmers' professional cooperative + farming households”, large-scale planting, standardized management, and branded sales can be achieved, which both ensures the quality of agricultural products and helps stabilize the planting area of the relevant agricultural products and achieve a balance between production and sales. Third, a logistics model for agricultural products with urban-rural interconnection should be established. The postal service can be used as the logistics platform for the rapid development of rural e-commerce, and at the same time relevant departments need to provide strong support in giving priority passage to agricultural product vehicles and supporting cold-chain logistics, thereby opening up the “last mile” of agricultural product sales. (Zhang Junjie, Member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of Laohekou City, Hubei Province)

Using the Internet of Things to Solve the “Hard to Sell, Expensive to Buy” Problem of Agricultural Products

Right now is the time when large quantities of fruit are coming onto the market, yet in many places poor fruit sales have appeared one after another. The main reason for poor fruit sales lies in asymmetric supply and demand information and cumbersome intermediate links; fruit farmers do not hold the initiative, and consumers' demand preferences are hard to feed back to the fruit farmers' end.

Can farmers opening online stores solve the problem of poor sales? The author believes that without economies of scale, relying on fighting alone to open online stores makes it hard to solve the problem. In small-scale sales, labor, packaging, and logistics account for a larger proportion of costs, and it may even happen that intermediate costs far exceed the value of the fruit itself, and these costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers. Therefore, Internet of Things marketing that omits intermediate links is expected to become a new way to solve the problems of agricultural products being “slow to sell, hard to sell, and expensive to buy”.

Taking our Tianmu Linghang fruit Internet of Things system as an example, when consumers place orders on the fruit Internet of Things platform, they submit their own needs and preferences, and the Internet of Things platform allocates fruit nearby, saving intermediate links and avoiding the waste of fruit resources, logistics resources, and human resources, thereby greatly reducing the cost at the sales terminal. As data accumulates, the preference and demand data of different regions, different seasons, and different consumers are fed back directly to fruit farmers, enabling them to make corresponding adjustments in a timely manner and grasp the initiative.

At present, establishing the fruit Internet of Things still requires solving the following difficulties. First, national Internet of Things standards have not yet been issued, and there is a lack of boundary guidance constrained by a framework. Scientific top-level design must be done well so that the Internet of Things can achieve sustainable development. Second, public acceptance is not high. The public's acceptance and recognition of the new model determines, to a certain extent, the speed and extent of the Internet of Things' popularization. In this regard, publicity efforts should be increased to raise farmers' acceptance of the Internet of Things. Third, there is a lack of talent to support the needs of industry development. It is hoped that universities and institutions can speed up the training of Internet of Things professionals.