What is the relationship between the implementation of agricultural input e-commerce and the arrival of the era of large-scale farmers?

In early 2015, the concept of "Internet Plus" emerged, and the agricultural input industry responded quickly. Traditional agricultural input manufacturers, traditional distribution enterprises, and e-commerce platform companies all rushed to lay out agricultural input e-commerce, opening China's "first year of agricultural input e-commerce."

Optimists have placed on agricultural input e-commerce the hope of fundamentally curing the industry's chronic problems: branded agricultural input manufacturers can sell quality products directly to farmers through e-commerce platforms, which on the one hand lowers prices and benefits the people, and on the other hand cuts off the entry point for counterfeit and inferior agricultural inputs and eliminates backward production capacity, achieving sound industry development; through internet finance, provide farmers with small-sum funding support, breaking the vicious debt cycle in which "farmers owe retailers, retailers owe distributors, and distributors owe manufacturers"; by integrating agricultural technology experts and "local experts," provide farmers with online diagnosis of pests, diseases, and weeds and guidance on fertilization and pesticide use, solving the long-standing "last mile" problem of agricultural technology extension.

The vision is so beautiful, yet voices of doubt are not few: China's specialized farmer cooperatives have begun to take shape, but smallholder farmers' dispersed operations still occupy the dominant position. The aging of farmers is becoming increasingly serious, and combined with limited education levels, this makes the implementation of agricultural input e-commerce even more difficult. Quite a few farmers do not have the ability to operate computers or smartphones, let alone place orders and make payments online or interact with experts; because the scale of operations is relatively small and the crop varieties planted differ, the timing for fertilization and pesticide application is urgent and the quantities are very small, so whether logistics speed can keep up and whether logistics costs are worthwhile are both problems; the agricultural input retail stores spread throughout villages provide technical services while also selling products on credit, and have long-term solid relationships with farmers, so farmers will not give up this convenient service just to save 1 yuan by buying 1 bag of pesticide online; internet finance mainly targets large-scale growers, and small scattered households still find it hard to taste the benefits; and because the causes of agricultural production problems are complex, without on-site investigation, the "prescriptions" given by online experts based only on pictures and text descriptions may not necessarily work.

The two views are sharply opposed, and each has its own reasoning. Agricultural input e-commerce has obvious advantages, but the difficulties it faces are also very real. This is in fact a contradiction between the advanced productive forces represented by the internet and the backward production relations of smallholder farmers' dispersed operations. Developing appropriately scaled operations and adjusting agricultural production relations thus become the basic conditions for agricultural input e-commerce to take root.

The author believes the prospects for agricultural input e-commerce are optimistic. On the one hand, the state encourages farmers to establish cooperatives and achieve appropriately scaled agricultural operations through land transfer, land trusteeship, and land equity participation. The "Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform" clearly proposes that the formation of grain prices should be close to the market. These policy supports and market orientations will produce a certain crowding-out effect on small scattered households and accelerate land transfer. Last year, when the temporary corn storage price was lowered, many farmers in Lishu County, Jilin, who had previously been unwilling to transfer land, actively asked to join cooperatives. On the other hand, China's economy faces relatively great downward pressure, and the number of migrant workers returning home has increased, while the return of the first generation of migrant workers is also at a peak. Having been exposed to varying degrees of modern civilization in cities, they have a relatively strong ability to adapt to new internet knowledge and new technologies and possess a certain amount of financial strength, and they will become an important force among China's new-type professional farmers. These factors will promote the early arrival of the era of large-scale farmers in China's agricultural production.

Therefore, it is necessary to fully recognize the dialectical relationship between the implementation of agricultural input e-commerce and the arrival of the era of large-scale farmers. Agricultural input e-commerce must have historical patience and wait for the arrival of the era of large-scale farmers. With the "fertile fields" of scaled agricultural operations, the various factors currently hindering agricultural input e-commerce from taking root will naturally disappear. Before that, agricultural input e-commerce must focus more on doing a good job in the hardware construction of grassroots outlets and the "internal cultivation" of improving service capabilities, and must focus even more on large-scale farmers, cooperatives, and specialized social service organizations, so that they can fully enjoy the "dividends" brought by agricultural input e-commerce, compress production costs, improve profitability, further amplify the crowding-out effect on small scattered households, and accelerate the pace of agricultural production entering the era of large-scale farmers.