How is Internet Plus profoundly changing agriculture?

Today, “Internet Plus” is a buzzword, and many industries are trying every possible way to connect with the internet, and agriculture is no exception. Moreover, compared with some other industries, the call for agriculture and the internet to “marry” is stronger and the action more resolute, and the internet's new technologies and new ideas are bringing unexpected changes to agriculture.

In fact, in recent years the development momentum of internet agriculture in our country has still been quite good. Taking agricultural e-commerce as an example, last year the online transaction value of agricultural products in our country exceeded 100 billion yuan, accounting for 3% of agricultural product sales. According to statistics, the number of agriculture-related e-commerce platforms in our country currently exceeds 3,000, showing a trend of rapid growth.

⟦NL> Agricultural e-commerce is only one major manifestation of “Internet Plus” in the agricultural field; “Internet Plus” has also achieved preliminary results in agricultural IoT, agricultural information services and other aspects.

But the current development of internet agriculture still faces difficulties such as changing concepts and building business models. For agriculture to embrace the internet, it is not only necessary to use the internet to transform agriculture, but the development model must also conform to the characteristics of agriculture itself, and in the collision and integration of agriculture and the internet, the business logic of the internet era must also be found.

The difficulties in developing internet agriculture are more than one, and in the face of numerous difficulties, it is necessary to tackle them from the root. At present, the more urgent and also fundamental issue is to clarify exactly what “Internet Plus agriculture” should add.

First, the internet and every link of agricultural production must be closely joined together. For example, traditional farming only fertilizes and irrigates based on experience, which not only wastes a large amount of manpower and material resources, but also poses a certain harm to environmental protection and soil and water conservation. Using internet technology can make planting and breeding methods more scientific and precise. Internet technology entering agricultural production links such as breeding, cultivation, irrigation and harvesting forces agricultural operators to develop precision agriculture and prompts fundamental changes in traditional agricultural production methods. Today, this kind of change is quietly happening around us.

Second, agriculture and e-commerce must be joined together, and the most important thing is to develop e-commerce for agricultural products and agricultural production materials. Here a misunderstanding needs to be corrected. Agricultural e-commerce cannot be simply understood as helping farmers sell agricultural products or purchase production materials; more importantly, it is necessary to establish a consumption-oriented agricultural industry system, that is, to shift from the past model of “farmers sell whatever they produce” to the model of “we produce whatever consumers need.”

There is another very important point, which is to make full use of existing internet resources, build a public service platform for quality and safety traceability of agricultural and sideline products, and establish a linkage mechanism between origin market release and market access. It is necessary to accelerate the promotion and application of information technologies such as the mobile internet, the Internet of Things and radio frequency identification in all links of production, processing, circulation and sales, strengthen the connection of upstream and downstream traceability systems and the sharing of information, continuously expand the coverage of the traceability system, realize traceability of the whole process of agricultural and sideline products “from farm to table,” and safeguard “food safety on the tip of the tongue.”

It can be foreseen that advanced information technologies such as the Internet of Things and big data entering traditional agriculture will bring opportunities for agricultural transformation. When agriculture “encounters” the internet, there is a lot of praise. But what must especially be noted at present is that developing internet agriculture requires a process, and one cannot rush for quick success, nor can one try to make things grow by pulling on the seedlings.