Government plus market: 3,700 Yiyi Information Societies bridge the "last mile" of service
Bridging the “last mile” of information into villages, letting farmers enjoy equal public services
“With the Yiyi Information Society, we farmers can also receive goods at our doorstep just like city people.” Holding a barrel of soybean oil that had just been delivered to his home, Li Jinglu, a farmer from Xun County, Henan, said with emotion. “At the start of the year, the village opened this Yiyi Society. It can pay mobile phone bills on our behalf, and we can also buy agricultural supplies and daily necessities online. People come and go, and it is quite lively.”
The Yiyi Information Society Li Jinglu mentioned is not large, about 30 sq m. What draws the most attention are the mobile phone terminals placed on the display stand, as well as products such as telephones and computers. On the wall also hang display boards marked with the words “Telecom Zone, Finance Zone, JD.com (online shopping) Zone, Mobile App Download Zone.”
Guo Zhonghua, a 40-year-old information officer at the Yiyi Society, said: “Here we can help villagers with various online services, and it can also serve as a logistics hub. Things villagers buy online can first be delivered to me, and then I help distribute them. Let villagers handle major matters without leaving the village and minor matters without leaving home.” In just half a year, this small “village-level information service station” helped surrounding villagers pay more than 30,000 yuan in fees, and placed online orders on their behalf for more than 10,000 jin of wheat seed and more than 30 tonnes of fertilizer. The Yiyi Society's monthly turnover increased to more than 30,000 yuan, and Guo Zhonghua became more and more motivated.
The Yiyi Information Society is the vehicle for the Ministry of Agriculture's pilot project bringing information into villages and households. In 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture built a group of village-level information service stations in 22 pilot counties in 10 pilot provinces and municipalities including Beijing, Liaoning, Jilin and Henan, promoting the connection of various agricultural public welfare services, convenience services and e-commerce resources to village-level stations, and initially forming a sustainable operating mechanism. As of now, 3,700 villages across the country have established Yiyi Information Societies.
According to reports, Yiyi Information Societies mainly provide four types of services: First, agricultural public welfare services. For example, 12316 remote expert diagnosis of animal and plant diseases, and policy, technology and market information consultation services are all provided to farmers free of charge. Second, convenience services. Services such as water, electricity and gas, communications, finance, insurance, ticketing, medical appointments and legal consultation are carried out. Third, e-commerce. E-commerce for agricultural products, agricultural supplies and daily necessities is carried out, and services such as rural logistics agency services are provided. Fourth, training and experience services. Training on new agricultural technologies, new varieties and new products is carried out, and information technology and product experiences are provided. Zhang Hecheng, Director of the Department of Market and Economic Information of the Ministry of Agriculture, said: “We hope that through the project of bringing information into villages and households, we can solve the ‘last mile’ of service, so that farmers can enjoy quick services without leaving the village, and through the internet let farmers enjoy equalized public services between urban and rural areas.”
“Bringing information into villages and households promotes the deep integration of the internet's innovative achievements with agricultural production, operation, management and services, and is of great significance for transforming the mode of agricultural development and innovating the mode of agricultural administrative management.” Chen Xiaohua, Vice Minister of Agriculture, said that ultimately the country's 600,000 administrative villages will be connected into one large network, forming agricultural big data, improving the government's decision-making capacity and level, and precisely pushing information to farming households and new types of agricultural business entities.
Information precisely reaching households, services conveniently reaching villages, exploring a sustainable mechanism
Who pays for building Yiyi Information Societies? Who operates them? Can they be sustainable?
Zhang Hecheng said: “The key to the success of bringing information into villages and households is to coordinate the two types of resources, agricultural public welfare services and rural socialized services, and build a trinity promotion mechanism of ‘government, service providers and operators,’ so that information precisely reaches households and services conveniently reach villages, and to explore and establish a sustainable development mechanism in which the government ‘builds the road,’ enterprises ‘run the vehicles,’ and farmers ‘pick up the goods.’”
⟦NL> Since last year, e-commerce companies such as Alibaba and JD.com have respectively implemented the strategies of “thousands of counties and tens of thousands of villages” and “channel sinking.” Many enterprises regard rural areas as a “blue ocean” and are willing to use the Ministry of Agriculture's platform for bringing information into villages and households to develop the rural market. Through Yiyi Information Societies entering villages and encouraging e-commerce enterprise service stations to sink downward, all localities have focused on exploring a feasible path for rural informatization.
Li Yong, Chairman of Nongxintong Group, the operator of Henan Province's pilot project for bringing information into villages and households, introduced the operating model of “building roads, running vehicles and picking up goods”: government departments are responsible for integrating public welfare resources, providing public welfare services, and coordinating the construction of the information superhighway; operators are responsible for the construction and specific operation of village-level information stations; service providers, including telecom operators, platform e-commerce companies and financial service providers, are responsible for providing various commercial services and channels, and obtain returns by expanding market scale.
“We have done calculations. If a telecom operator sets up a point in a rural area or township, a single store requires an investment of 100,000 yuan. Relying on existing resources or channels, we look for agricultural supply stores, supermarkets and so on that can cooperate, and the average cost is only 10,000-15,000 yuan, so the input cost is not large.” Li Yong said that after the platform is set up, telecom operators, platform e-commerce companies and others interested in developing the rural market are all willing to cooperate with Yiyi Societies and pay a certain proportion of rebates based on sales. “In this way, without relying on government investment, enterprises open up markets, farmers get real benefits, and there is win-win cooperation among multiple parties, so this matter can continue to be done.”
The “digital divide” is still huge, and more than 70 percent of farmers do not use the internet
In the process of pilot construction, Yiyi Information Societies also encountered difficulties.
Development among regions is uneven. At present, there is still a relatively large “digital divide” between urban and rural areas in China. More than 50,000 administrative villages in rural areas across the country still do not have broadband access, fewer than 30% of rural households have computers, and more than 70 percent of farmers do not use the internet; last year the operating revenue of agricultural product e-commerce exceeded 100 billion yuan, accounting for about 3% of total agricultural product sales, about 7 percentage points lower than the share of online retail sales of consumer goods in society.
“At the funding level, government investment is also relatively important.” Xue Hong, Director of the Market Information Division of the Henan Provincial Department of Agriculture, said that in Henan's pilot process, the Ministry of Agriculture provided 3 million yuan in guiding funds, and provinces, cities and counties also secured 5.54 million yuan in funding support. However, because there are a great number of village-level information service stations, investment in storefront production and installation, system development, daily operation and maintenance and so on is relatively large, and there is still a relatively large funding gap. For example, in Shan County, Sanmenxia, producing and installing one storefront requires an average investment of nearly 4,000 yuan. “It is suggested that the fiscal authorities increase support for bringing information into villages and households, and give certain subsidies for the early-stage construction of information societies.”
The integration and sharing of resources is also a difficulty. Judging from the operation of village-level information service stations already built, services such as finance, electricity, medical care, village affairs disclosure and government affairs disclosure involve multiple departments, and resource coordination and integration are relatively difficult. “The number of departments and enterprises entering village-level information service stations is still considerably short of what was envisaged, the service content carried out by village-level information service stations is not rich enough, and business transaction volume is still relatively low.” Zhang Hecheng said.
A commercially sustainable mechanism has initially been established, but the operation supervision system is not yet sound. “At the beginning of the pilot, the Ministry of Agriculture proposed actively exploring an interest exchange mechanism of ‘wool coming from the cow,’ and now this mechanism has taken initial shape, but there are still many systems that need to be explored. For example, the management and reward and punishment mechanism for information officers urgently needs to be improved, and this requires efforts in many aspects such as early-stage training, informatization management and later-stage supervision.” Li Yong said.