China will support agriculture-related e-commerce to promote the building of modern agriculture
According to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture, at present the proportion of agricultural products sold online in China accounts for about 2% of total circulation, of which dried goods and processed products account for 80%, while fresh products such as fruits, vegetables and aquatic products have all seen increases of more than 300%, and there is a need to speed up the resolution of the bottleneck problems in the development of agriculture-related e-commerce.
Wang Xiaobing, deputy director of the Market and Economic Information Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that at present there are problems such as the weak e-commerce access capability of agricultural production and operation entities, difficulty in organizing sources of goods, and an imperfect cold-chain logistics system.
⟦NL> “Enterprises hope to increase investment in cold-chain logistics, but the approval rate for cold-chain truck licenses is relatively low, and the electric vehicles used for terminal delivery are often restricted in traffic rectification campaigns.” Zhao Pingyuan said, expressing the hope that policies will be introduced in real earnest to support the development of cold-chain logistics, and that farmers' cooperatives and other entities will be encouraged to connect with e-commerce platforms.
Industry experts also suggested speeding up the promotion of relevant database services for e-commerce development and encouraging brand building and promotion.
It is understood that in 2015, the agricultural authorities took agricultural e-commerce as an important way to improve quality and efficiency and transform the development model, and will carry out e-commerce skills training for agricultural production and operation entities, organize agricultural production and operation entities to connect with e-commerce enterprises, and carry out pilot demonstration work for agricultural e-commerce.
Experts pointed out that at present China has 178 million rural netizens, and the online shopping ratio is relatively low. Promoting e-commerce into rural areas includes both “agricultural products going to the cities” and “industrial goods going to the countryside”, which is conducive to leveraging the vast rural market and cultivating new growth points.
For many years, because rural consumers live in relatively scattered locations and order density is low, most logistics companies have been unable to reach them. Alibaba, which is optimistic about the large rural market, has already launched the “Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages” plan, and will establish 1,000 county-level operation centers and 100,000 village-level service stations within 3 to 5 years; JD plans to set up 100,000 village-level delivery stations in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Bohai Rim, and provide financial services such as low-interest loans.
Experts pointed out that promoting e-commerce into rural areas requires not only establishing and improving infrastructure such as logistics and networks, but also speeding up the development of rural service industries, establishing and improving rural credit and payment methods, and establishing a product quality inspection and testing system.