The road for agricultural products sold online is getting wider and wider
Right now it is the strawberry marketing season, and looking at the multifunctional sensors in the greenhouse, Gu Jing, chairman of the Shengbao Farmers' Cooperative in Jinghai, Tianjin, was very satisfied: "Vegetable greenhouses require the most labor. After the Internet of Things equipment was installed, labor costs can be saved by 600,000 yuan a year. Previously one person could manage at most two greenhouses, but now can easily manage 5. Take rolling up the curtains, for example. In the past it all depended on experience, with manual operation greenhouse by greenhouse, which was time-consuming and troublesome. Now it is done with a click of the mouse."
In the cooperative's central control room, conditions inside the energy-saving greenhouse were displayed in real time on the computer screen, and dynamic curve charts recorded information such as the air temperature and humidity inside the greenhouse over 24 hours and soil moisture. Whenever needed, operations such as irrigation can be carried out automatically. Gu Jing's cooperative is an agricultural Internet of Things demonstration site of the Ministry of Agriculture, with nearly 600 greenhouses in total. At present, nearly 20 percent have already adopted the Internet of Things, and he plans to expand the scale further.
If the Internet of Things has made agricultural production more convenient, the Internet has opened up sales channels. The Jifeng Vegetable Cooperative in Jinghai, Tianjin, not far away, is one example. The cooperative's vegetable sales have no physical store and do not go through wholesale markets. They rely entirely on the Internet. In just 5 years, it has already had nearly 10,000 members online. "Customers can choose delivery frequency and vegetable packages online. Online operation has realized direct delivery from the base to subscribers, saving a large number of intermediate links, and prices are 10% to 20% cheaper than supermarkets," said Bo Chunxia, chairman of the cooperative.
When the reporter interviewed, a batch of leafy vegetables had just come out of the greenhouse. After washing, cooperative staff packaged products that passed pesticide testing and affixed QR code labels. Bo Chunxia said the cooperative has been included in Tianjin's vegetable quality traceability system. Consumers can use smartphones to scan the QR code and obtain information on vegetable production and pesticide testing. She said this batch of vegetables could be delivered to consumers' homes in Tianjin and Beijing within a few hours.
It is understood that both cooperatives benefited from the agricultural Internet of Things platform of the Tianjin Municipal Agriculture Commission. The platform was jointly developed by Tianjin and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, covers 17 databases in fields such as agricultural production and market circulation, and has realized online collection of sensor data from 25 bases across the city. "Without going to the fields, we can grasp the planting and breeding conditions of cooperatives connected to the network across the city," said Guan Hongyi, director of the Information Center of the Market Information Division of the Tianjin Municipal Agriculture Commission. The agricultural product traceability platform provides consumers with quality traceability services and has already developed traceability systems for safe vegetables, dairy products, and aquatic products; the agricultural product e-commerce platform provides market connection services for cooperatives and others, and already has online trading systems for multiple enterprise e-commerce businesses such as Shiguanjia and Aifurui.
"A few years ago, we saw chlorophyll detection sensors in Israel. Now Chinese enterprises have begun to tackle the problem, and have begun to possess independent intellectual property rights in the development of detection sensors for biological entities including chlorophyll and leaf surface temperature. At present, there are more than 3,000 agricultural product e-commerce platforms nationwide, and the online trading volume of agricultural products is growing rapidly," said Zhang Hecheng, director of the Market Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. The application of the Internet and the Internet of Things in agriculture has achieved notable results, and a number of mature business models have emerged. More powerful measures should be taken to make them a new driving force for modern agriculture.