Rural e-commerce sales are equally booming on Double Eleven

"200 mallards, Double Eleven promotional order..." A new order message came through the mobile app of rural e-commerce broker Yan Jian, and he hurriedly called the duck farmers in the village to organize supply. As the Double Eleven that many online shoppers in the city look forward to approaches, the e-commerce brokers active in the rural areas of Pubei County, Guangxi, are also actively preparing for their own agricultural product e-commerce sales carnival.

Two years ago, Yan Jian, who lives in Rixin Village, Longmen Town, Pubei County, together with 14 other mallard farmers, set up the Pubei Yuezhou Fragrant Duck Cooperative, specializing in raising the mallard unique to Pubei. This year, Pubei County vigorously promoted the construction of rural e-commerce projects, establishing 548 rural e-commerce service points across the county. Yan Jian began to "go online" and became an e-commerce broker. Since then, finding supply for e-commerce platforms and selling ducks online for farmers has become his new profession.

"In the past, farmers had to go to the town market to sell ducks, and sometimes they would wait all day and still might not sell them all. Now, through e-commerce brokers, they can easily sell the ducks just on their mobile phones, and about 5,500 ducks are traded through mobile e-commerce every month," Yan Jian said.

Since the beginning of this year, Pubei County has actively promoted the project of bringing e-commerce into rural areas, building e-commerce service stations in more than 93% of administrative villages, which has also given rise to the new profession of rural e-commerce broker. Seeing Double Eleven arrive, the promotional activities on e-commerce platforms have made Yan Jian's ducks very much in demand, and the protected-price purchasing implemented by the e-commerce platforms has guaranteed both sales channels and returns for farmers. Many farmers are also actively planning to expand their breeding scale.

Wu Yuanhua, director of the Pubei County Commerce Bureau, introduced that at present, more than 200 e-commerce brokers in the county rely on service points to bridge farmers and e-commerce platforms, allowing high-quality rural specialty products originally hidden deep in the mountains to find markets through the internet. With the help of e-commerce brokers, farmers can complete sales without leaving their villages.

The development of rural e-commerce has allowed many people to see business opportunities, and many have joined the ranks of e-commerce brokers. Like Yan Jian, rural e-commerce broker Ning Zhengkun is also actively preparing for Double Eleven. He is mainly responsible for finding Guandong fish supply for a local e-commerce platform in Pubei. He said: "In the past, Guandong fish was mainly sold locally. Now with the e-commerce platform, a lot of the fish is sold to Guangdong."

E-commerce entering villages has been welcomed by local farmers in Pubei. The "Shunlufa" rural e-commerce app developed by a local enterprise has had 140,000 registered users in less than a month of operation. So far, it has sold 9.2 million kg of lychees, 40,000 kg of guavas, and 15,000 kg of red russula mushrooms online for local farmers, with total platform transaction volume nearing 100 million yuan.

On October 17 this year, 51 well-known e-commerce enterprises including JD.com and Alibaba entered the Pubei E-commerce Industrial Park. Through the operating model of "e-commerce platform + broker + professional cooperative + farmer," more than 100 kinds of specialty agricultural products such as Guandong fish and guavas are sold across the country.

"Farmers have products but do not necessarily master e-commerce technology. Brokers can effectively help farmers complete online sales of agricultural products." Wu Yuanhua introduced that in order to improve the ability of e-commerce brokers to serve farmers, Pubei County has completed more than 3,000 person-times of rural e-commerce training this year, driving more than 2,000 rural young people and college students to return home to start businesses. At present, another 900 people have signed up hoping to become rural e-commerce brokers.