The internet-plus-agriculture boom is surging, and traditional enterprises are turning around to embrace the internet
Last Friday, the Ministry of Commerce published the “Internet Plus Circulation” Action Plan. As the first industry plan for “Internet Plus”, the problems of the “last kilometer” and the “last hundred meters” of rural e-commerce once again triggered heated discussion. A few days ago, the Ministry of Agriculture proposed launching a pilot program to bring information into villages and households, and each administrative village will have at least 1 village-level information service station. The “internet-plus-agriculture” boom is surging and unstoppable.
“‘Internet Plus agriculture’ is the hardest to add among the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, but once added, it will bring the greatest change.” Meng Zhaoli, chief economist of the Tencent Research Institute, told a CNR Finance reporter.
The internet is becoming ever more closely tied to agriculture, rural areas and farmers
The disconnect between production and sales has always been one of the challenges facing agricultural development. Agricultural products that farmers work hard to produce are not marketable, causing prices to plunge and producers to suffer losses; or else demand for agricultural products is large while production cannot keep up, and soaring prices are not uncommon.
“The prices of agricultural products fluctuate very sharply, mainly because communication of production, supply and sales information is poor; communication between agriculture and enterprises serving agriculture also suffers from information asymmetry. For example, for financial enterprises, collecting scattered farmer information is very difficult, and all of this affects the development of agriculture and related industries.” Zhang Yuanhong, director of the Rural Industry Research Office of the Institute of Rural Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with a CNR Finance reporter.
These difficult problems all point to one outlet: the internet. Zhang Yuanhong believes that the internet is becoming ever more closely tied to agriculture, rural areas and farmers. Farmers' production and daily life both need to rely on information, and the quality of agricultural products and pollution control also require the support of information.
”The role of the internet is enormous, and its impact on the transformation of modern agriculture will be even greater. Informatization and precision are one direction for modern agriculture.” Zhang Yuanhong said.
“Even a small improvement in the source of information will greatly improve their lives. Trade is only a very small part of it. Other things, such as rural information management, crop pests and diseases, medical care, transportation, basic grain information, and the real-time uploading of basic information, are all very important.” Meng Zhaoli said. She added that what “Internet Plus” brings is not only growth in GDP itself, but also an improvement in overall social welfare.
She believes that changing rural life is not a problem of technology itself. Technology is only the foundation. More important is changing the habits of users as a whole. Getting farmers accustomed to using the internet requires cultivation from the top down, such as providing content suitable for farmers and subsequent continuous mobile phone operation prompts. Only when an atmosphere gradually forms will there be a clustering effect. It is estimated that 3-5 years will be needed for a huge improvement.
Traditional agricultural production enterprises are turning around one after another to embrace the internet
Yesterday, New Hope Liuhe Co., Ltd. and Beijing Yiren Yimutian Network Technology Co., Ltd. reached a strategic cooperation on the raw material procurement side and the product output side. The former is the leading agricultural enterprise in China's largest agriculture and animal husbandry industrial cluster, while the latter is China's largest agricultural product information trading platform. This alliance of strong players may be the best example of “internet-plus-agriculture.”
“The cooperation with Yimutian has opened the prelude to the New Hope Group's deep cooperation in ‘Internet Plus supply chain.’ The traditional agriculture and animal husbandry production genes of New Hope Liuhe, plus Yimutian's agricultural e-commerce genes, will inject more imaginative space for New Hope in areas such as future restructuring of the animal husbandry industry, consumer-side data marketing management, and product traceability.” said Li Bing, president of New Hope Liuhe.
It is understood that in the past 10 months, Yimutian's platform transaction volume has cumulatively exceeded 10 billion yuan, while its transaction target for the year is set at 100 billion yuan. Yimutian CEO Deng Jinhong admitted that this is the speed that only the internet can bring.
“We cooperate both with suppliers like New Hope Liuhe and with end purchasers such as Country Style Cooking and Yunhaiyao, organically combining them through internet tools, and it is very likely that we can reach 100 billion.” Deng Jinhong said in an interview with a CNR Finance reporter.
On how to use internet tools for organic combination, Deng Jinhong gave an example: through real-time monitoring, Yimutian learned from end purchasers that last week's sales of braised pig trotters were ten times those of braised mutton, so the data could be fed back to production enterprises at the first opportunity to increase the supply of pig trotters, because the purchase volume from end merchants would increase.
“I believe this is greatly beneficial to both sides. This is the change in circulation efficiency brought by the internet. A large amount of transaction and supply chain data helps agricultural and animal husbandry producers become ‘smarter,’ solves the problems of scattered agricultural products and information asymmetry, and brings supply and demand closer.“ Deng Jinhong analyzed.