Opportunities and Obstacles Coexist on the Road to Internet Plus Animal Husbandry Development

With government support and guidance from the business community, e-commerce is known to almost everyone in cities, and in rural areas it has gradually become known to rural residents as well thanks to Alibaba's and JD.com's "going to the countryside" initiatives. In agriculture, e-commerce for agricultural products, e-commerce for animal husbandry, and e-commerce for fresh produce are currently even more at the starting stage, and are also "pigs on the" (a hot stage), though it would be more accurate to call it an exploratory stage.

As far as e-commerce for animal husbandry is concerned, there are currently not many real online transactions; it is more of a showcase for products and services, which is the current state of many agricultural product e-commerce businesses. There are many reasons for this; the editor believes there are three main ones. First, products; second, logistics; third, consumption habits.

Products

In the course of e-commerce development, product problems have become increasingly prominent. Fake, chaotic and poor-quality products all impact the steady development of e-commerce. Although there is still a lot of uncertainty in the Internet animal husbandry field, the industry's savage growth and the lack of detailed regulatory rules have not stopped people's impulse to "strike gold." In the development of animal husbandry e-commerce, those in the animal husbandry industry must not seek quick success and instant benefits when doing e-commerce; on the contrary, they should pay more attention to the quality of animal husbandry products and facilities, remain calm and conservative amid the e-commerce tide, and adhere to the principle of quality first.

Means of production require a relatively long period before their quality can be verified. If the quality is poor, it will cause great losses. Compared with fast-moving consumer goods, the threshold of trust is clearly higher. Doing e-commerce in the animal husbandry industry has a limitation, namely that the non-standardization of livestock products is relatively serious. Livestock products are not industrial products; a machine tool or a mold can produce standardized products, but animals and plants are produced naturally, which inevitably makes standardization very difficult and makes them more susceptible to natural risks that industry does not have, and continuous product supply is also very problematic. Therefore, how to make a company's own product standards fit users on a certain platform and at a certain level is something that must be considered. If goods cannot meet the standard, they are difficult to sell.

For example, the development of e-commerce in the veterinary drug industry must especially focus on product quality. At present, the Ministry of Agriculture has not issued relevant management measures for veterinary drug e-commerce, but units engaged in veterinary drug e-commerce should possess a veterinary drug business license and a business license, should post them on their online stores so that farmers know they are lawful operators, and may only sell lawful veterinary drugs produced by regular manufacturers approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. Only by strictly controlling the access of veterinary drug e-commerce can the quality and safety of veterinary drugs be ensured.

Logistics

Logistics is a big problem in animal husbandry e-commerce! Logistics costs are an even more realistic problem. For animal husbandry e-commerce to solve the "last mile" problem, it is unrealistic to do so without dealers. At present, there are two ways for manufacturers to ship goods. One is ordering by phone, with the manufacturer shipping to a freight company in Kaiping city proper, and the pig farm sending someone every two days to pick up the goods, with the freight company collecting payment on delivery. This method, however, is unrealistic for small pig farms. The other is to join with several nearby large pig farms, with the manufacturer or a provincial-level agent in Guangzhou chartering a truck to transport the goods over, unloading separately at each pig farm. By comparison, the first method costs 3,000 yuan per truck for ordinary logistics delivery to Kaiping, while the second method costs only more than 1,000 yuan per truck. But for smaller farmers with even less volume, going directly to a village or township veterinary drug store to buy is obviously more convenient.

Consumption Habits

In agriculture, consumption habits mostly involve buying and selling on the spot, which allows for a better understanding of the quality of agricultural products and better guarantees their freshness. In the animal husbandry industry, however, there are currently very few pig farms that use e-commerce to shop directly; farmers are still used to going to veterinary drug stores and buying along the way. Although e-commerce is popular, from the perspective of suppliers in the agriculture and animal husbandry industry, large companies are actually less active than small companies; after all, large companies have already invested heavily in building offline channels and cannot easily give them up. Newly established small companies, by contrast, do not have this burden. But from the perspective of pig farms, large pig farms are also not active, because the quality of any product can have a big impact, while small pig farms, limited by technology, do not know much about products, and e-commerce may be more attractive if prices are low. Large pig farms often get goods directly from manufacturers, so there is no need for e-commerce to reduce distribution links. Of course, small pig farms cannot enjoy this convenience; manufacturers generally do not feel at ease shipping directly to small pig farms.

With the arrival of the e-commerce tide, under the temptation of explosive profits, giant animal husbandry enterprises can no longer hold back and have one after another tested the waters, stepping onto the road of e-commerce. The past two years have seemingly become an era of explosive e-commerce in the animal husbandry industry. The speed at which online malls are launched and their concentrated numbers have grown rapidly, and the flames of e-commerce have spread into the animal husbandry industry, with a trend of growing ever more intense. This shows that major enterprises in the industry are optimistic about this delicious "cake" of e-commerce and all want to open up the market as quickly as possible. Taobao, JD.com and others have also seen the business opportunities and have one after another joined hands with animal husbandry enterprises, stepping into animal husbandry e-commerce and expanding their business scope, eagerly hoping to get a share in this great explosion of animal husbandry e-commerce.

With the arrival of animal husbandry e-commerce, some are happy and some are worried; there are opportunities and also challenges. For those who see the business opportunities in this, of course there is more joy. But it is even more important to be aware of the obstacles hindering the development of animal husbandry e-commerce.

Whether happy or worried, animal husbandry e-commerce is there, and under the impetus of various factors, it is slowly coming. Carrying both glory and wounds, it embraces the future.