Selling Agricultural Products: E-commerce Is Not the Savior
Recently, WeChat Moments has often been flooded with posts about e-commerce quickly helping unmarketable agricultural products. On reflection, the current combination of the internet and agricultural cooperatives has indeed set off a popular trend in the outskirts of Beijing. Just a few days ago, at an "Internet + Farmers" exchange meeting organized by a government department, this reporter watched several well-known fresh-food e-commerce companies compete in making "bold pronouncements": one said it would join hands with 200 cooperatives before the end of the year, another said its business scope would cover the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region next year... Every speaker was full of ambition, and the farmer representatives present were all beaming.
While everyone is "feverish" about agricultural products "going electric," this reporter thinks it is time to pour a ladle of cold water and remind farmers: e-commerce is not the "savior" of agricultural product sales.
This reporter is not deliberately playing devil's advocate. Having several helpers sell things for us is naturally not a bad thing; what is feared is that after leaning on a cane for too long, one wastes even the instinct to walk and can no longer unleash the potential to run.
This is not alarmist talk. Over the past few days, during interviews in the suburbs with the earliest group of rural areas to embrace e-commerce, this reporter found that in the eyes of agricultural experts, the production techniques they applied were only at the lower-middle level for the outskirts of Beijing, yet their products sold extremely well and were even favored by many large enterprises as "welfare vegetables" for employees.
"It doesn't matter if what you grow is ordinary; they can sell it for you, and even sell it at a high price. Isn't that uncanny?" Speaking of this, a local farmer practically regarded e-commerce as a deity. Right beside him, the yellow sticky board hanging in the greenhouse was already covered with a full layer of pests and should have been replaced long ago, yet he never even glanced at it. This scene remains vivid in this reporter's memory to this day.
Undoubtedly, compared with traditional methods, e-commerce indeed has enormous advantages in sales channels, but it is only a channel, and it has helped greatly in communicating information. But the question is: should all unsalable agricultural products be blamed on poor information?
Obviously not. Has your variety degenerated and lost the market? Is your planting model outdated, making it impossible to stagger your market time from competitors? Is your flavor old-fashioned and outstripped by others? These are all questions the heads of agricultural cooperatives should seriously consider. If you do not proactively align with the market and rely entirely on e-commerce, perhaps for now you can rest easy, but once the channel value of e-commerce is exhausted, the crisis of unsalable products will still erupt.
In that case, does e-commerce become a "stimulant" for the operation of agricultural cooperatives, effective in the short term but harmful in the long run? This reporter believes there is no need to be so pessimistic.
"Internet +" is probably the most popular phrase right now. After this magical "+" you can add anything, from financial capital to baozi and flatbreads, encompassing everything. Agriculture is naturally no exception.
On closer analysis, e-commerce helping sell agricultural products through its flexible and rapid channels only exerts a small part of the miraculous power of "Internet +." In fact, in crop planting, later-stage maintenance, harvest management and other aspects, "Internet +" still has much to offer.
At present, attempts in this area already exist. For example, in Yanqing, Changping, Daxing and other districts and counties, a high-tech "farm cloud" is being applied more and more widely in agricultural production. By collecting and analyzing big data, the "farm cloud" can tell producers when to plant and remove pests, when to water and apply topdressing, and can also arrange staggered fruit harvesting by analyzing market fluctuations; every bit helps improve the quality of agricultural products when they reach the market.
No matter when, quality is the lifeline of agricultural products. When the miraculous power of the internet and big data begins to focus on this, we have reason to believe that the era of true win-win for both sides is about to arrive.
We can even imagine that in the near future, big data encompassing each of our taste preferences will provide an important basis for crop breeding and research and development. By then, "Internet +" will have penetrated the entire source of agriculture, fundamentally innovating the genes of this ancient industry, enabling it to renew itself and display fascinating vitality.