Agriculture will become the next big opportunity for the industrial internet
Recently the State Council issued the "Opinions on Vigorously Developing E-commerce and Accelerating the Cultivation of New Economic Momentum," emphasizing the need to actively develop rural e-commerce and encouraging agricultural means of production enterprises to develop e-commerce. At the same time, the Ministry of Commerce recently researched and formulated the "Internet Plus Circulation Action Plan" to accelerate the deep integration of the internet and the circulation industry. Industry insiders pointed out that the internet has already affected many industries such as retail and advertising, and in the future the internet will also affect other industries. With policies continuously adding support, the industrial internet is rising, and agriculture will become the next big opportunity for the industrial internet, deserving key attention from investors.
Policy Support Intensifies
In order to further stimulate the innovation drive, creative potential and entrepreneurial vitality of e-commerce, accelerate the strategic adjustment of the economic structure, and achieve improved economic quality and efficiency, the State Council recently issued the "Opinions on Vigorously Developing E-commerce and Accelerating the Cultivation of New Economic Momentum" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The "Opinions" proposed that by 2020, China will basically build a unified, open, orderly, honest, law-abiding, safe and reliable large e-commerce market. E-commerce will be deeply integrated with other industries, become an important platform for promoting entrepreneurship, stabilizing employment and improving people's livelihood services, and play a key role in the synchronized development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization.
It is worth noting that the "Opinions" emphasize the need to actively develop rural e-commerce and encourage agricultural means of production enterprises to develop e-commerce. With the rapid penetration of the internet and policy support, agricultural materials e-commerce is entering a golden period of rapid development.
At the same time, the Ministry of Commerce recently researched and formulated the "Internet Plus Circulation Action Plan" to accelerate the deep integration of the internet and the circulation industry. The "Action Plan" proposed cultivating 200 comprehensive demonstration counties for e-commerce entering rural areas, creating 60 national-level e-commerce demonstration bases, cultivating 150 national-level e-commerce demonstration enterprises, promoting the construction of 100 overseas e-commerce warehouses, and guiding local governments to build 50 e-commerce talent training bases, striving to reach 22 trillion yuan in e-commerce transaction volume and 5.5 trillion yuan in online retail sales by the end of 2016.
Industry insiders pointed out that this year's government work report proposed the "Internet Plus" action plan, with the whole country planning to promote cross-border integration of a new generation of information technology and modern industries, create new engines, and cultivate and spawn new momentum for economic and social development. Agriculture is one of the core areas of the "Internet Plus" action plan.
The Next Big Opportunity for the Internet
The past 20 years have been the era of the consumer internet, in which the internet centered on end users and took consumption as the main line, rapidly penetrating into every field of people's lives and profoundly influencing the public's consumption habits. In the future, the internet will also center on producers, changing the behavior of industrial producers, reflected in the internet's transformation of every link in industry such as production, trading, financing and circulation, so as to improve producers' operational efficiency. The internet is changing every industry, entering the "era of the industrial internet."
On the one hand, agriculture is relatively far from the internet; on the other hand, the industry chain from field to table has relatively long nodes. At present, from agricultural materials sales, intermediary services and land transfer to agricultural production and agricultural product sales, the internet has already appeared across the entire complete agricultural industry chain. Along with the further scaling of land management and the rise of new types of business entities such as family farms and specialized cooperatives, the era of the agricultural internet has arrived, and the internet is subtly transforming the agricultural industry chain.
"Internet Plus" entering the agricultural materials market will affect the supply of agricultural materials in agricultural production from all aspects of agricultural materials production, circulation, marketing and services, and further transform the relationship between agricultural materials producers and farming households. The internet will, through precision agriculture, the agricultural internet of things, internet cloud services, big data analysis and so on, achieve the transformation of issues such as agricultural production technology problems, the difficulty of advancing agricultural scale, agricultural product quality and safety issues, and the realization of product value.
It is worth noting that farmers are highly sensitive to the prices of agricultural products such as fertilizers, pesticides and seeds, and internet e-commerce business happens to hit users' pain points precisely. At the starting point of the rise of the rural internet, companies involved in online trading of agricultural materials and chemical raw materials face huge transformation opportunities amid this great wave.