Rural circulation system restructuring accelerates, e-commerce enterprises embrace a boom
Han Jun, deputy director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs and deputy director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, revealed to an Economic Information Daily reporter on the 17th at the "2015 Fourth China International Agricultural Business Summit Forum" that in 2014 the area of contracted farmland transferred by farming households nationwide accounted for 30.3% of total arable land area, with the transfer speed and proportion almost the highest among developing countries. However, more than half of this farmland is still transferred between farming households, and less than 10% of the land is transferred to enterprises.
Han Jun said that the prominent problem facing Chinese agriculture at the current stage is that it still remains in the traditional supply chain model, and the relationship between the secondary and tertiary industries and farming households is basically "two separate skins," with no long-term contracts and a lack of trust. Therefore, to deeply adjust the agricultural structure, it is necessary to extend and integrate the primary, secondary and tertiary industries and build a new collaborative agricultural industry chain.
An entrepreneur told reporters that one of the most important innovative practices of the collaborative industry chain is the recently popular integration of internet factors into the original "company plus farming households" model.
"Enterprises are connected to farming households on one end and consumers on the other. With the rise of e-commerce, traditional channels and supermarkets have begun to decline, and the impact has been very great." Zhu Yanming, founder and CEO of Chic Group, said that the plan is therefore to build a more organic "bridge" between urban consumers and rural farming households through the internet, allowing their agricultural processed products to be sold online through WeChat and e-commerce.
According to Wu Minzhi, senior vice president of Alibaba, when Alibaba began its "rural Taobao" business half a year ago, it had not yet thought that this was a combination of the internet and the rural market. Now, with the rise of "Internet Plus," rural e-commerce may have received a "once-in-a-century opportunity." Agricultural entrepreneurs like Zhu Yanming, who intend to take advantage of the tailwind to reform circulation channels, have sprung up like bamboo shoots after rain.
Reporters learned that rural e-commerce is the largest and most important of Alibaba Group's three major strategies after its IPO. In the next 3 to 5 years, Alibaba plans to invest 10 billion yuan to establish 1,000 county-level e-commerce service centers and 100,000 village-level service stations nationwide, covering one third of the country's counties and one sixth of rural areas.
In addition, Alibaba plans to develop rural e-commerce by relying on its entire ecosystem. Businesses such as Alipay, Yu'e Bao, Zhaocai Bao and Ant Micro Loan are all already linked to rural areas. In the future, if a certain agricultural product shows strong sales potential in big data, farming households can directly obtain loan support through Alibaba when purchasing agricultural materials.
Ma Jianrong, vice president of JD Group, said that JD also has a plan called "3F" in agricultural e-commerce, namely industrial products going to the countryside, farming households obtaining loans, and agricultural products going to the cities. In this strategy, JD has built a network covering rural areas through county-level service stations and rural promoters. Its role is logistics distribution and marketing for agricultural materials and industrial products entering villages, information credit data collection and promotion for rural finance, and information collection and procurement of fresh agricultural products. Since the beginning of this year, JD has launched service centers in 500 counties nationwide, has service stores in 1,000 counties, recruited 18,000 rural promoters, and covered 180,000 villages.
While the enthusiasm of enterprises is surging, the policy level is also helping to build an "Internet Plus" rural circulation system. Reporters learned from the Ministry of Commerce that on the 15th the Ministry of Commerce officially released the "Internet Plus Circulation" action plan. As the first industry plan for "Internet Plus," the first important task of this action plan is to promote e-commerce into rural areas and cultivate a rural e-commerce environment.
Nie Linhai, deputy director of the E-commerce Department of the Ministry of Commerce, told reporters that the action plan focuses on key areas and links for deepening the application of e-commerce and puts forward detailed and specific work goals and key tasks. On the one hand, it is necessary to solve the "last kilometer" problem of e-commerce, for example by actively developing e-commerce in small and medium-sized cities and rural areas, improving infrastructure such as express delivery, logistics and warehousing, and at the same time encouraging e-commerce enterprises to go global by building overseas warehouses to create an overseas logistics system; on the other hand, it is necessary to break the bottleneck of the "last 100 meters" of e-commerce, such as encouraging e-commerce to enter communities, promoting online and offline interaction, and innovating ways to serve people's livelihoods.
Cai Lei, vice president of JD Group, said that in the process of developing rural e-commerce, one very deep feeling is that the e-commerce ecological environment at the county level urgently needs improvement. First, infrastructure construction does not match the development needs of e-commerce. Basic logistics facilities in some counties are still not widespread, and agricultural products entering cities are still constrained by the lack of infrastructure such as cold-chain logistics. In some areas, there is a lack of scientific planning, and building parks that do not suit the development patterns of e-commerce causes waste. Second, there is a lack of e-commerce technical guidance, and the technical threshold for buying and selling is difficult to break through. Third, there is a lack of brand awareness. Many so-called well-known products lack quality inspection reports and have a low degree of standardization, making it difficult for high quality to command a high price.
"This 'Internet Plus' action plan specifically mentions a series of measures in this regard. We look forward to opening up these problems and obstacles one by one, so that rural e-commerce can achieve a high level of development," Cai Lei said.