How can rural e-commerce spark farmers' enthusiasm for participation?

Farmers get their first taste of the "Internet Plus" dividend

At present, in some economically developed rural areas, the internet is quietly integrating into rural life. Especially during the Spring Festival, online chatting, grabbing red envelopes, and sending WeChat New Year greetings and other forms of online communication have already become familiar to and accepted by farmers, who also try to use the internet to learn the latest agricultural news, shop online, open micro-shops to sell agricultural products, sell farm machinery, and so on. Farmers have, one might say, gotten their first taste of the "Internet Plus" dividend.

The author's investigation found no shortage of vivid, lively examples of internet thinking entering farmers' lives. "In the past we relied on the market; now we rely on the internet. Agricultural products sell to farther places, and both volume and price have gone up. Farmers have hitched a ride on informatization." Meng Qiao of Fengqiu, Henan, posted information about his family's pig farm on a WeChat official account and even printed a QR code on the pork. In 2015, his sales through the WeChat platform increased by 10%. In Datong, Shanxi province, family farm owners have opened their own micro-shops, and selling agricultural products online is no longer a novelty. The Kelei Farmers' Professional Cooperative introduced fungus strains and technology from Northeast China to grow wood ear mushrooms. It not only adopted the traditional development model of "enterprise + base + farming households" but also followed the e-commerce trend, taking the path of "agriculture + internet" and creating the "Kelei Farm" WeChat shop, selling rural green foods to the cities through the internet.

Since last year, e-commerce companies such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Suning have also begun large-scale e-commerce campaigns reaching down into villages. Agricultural-supply e-commerce platforms such as TianTianQuan, Cloud Farm, Nonghuiwang, and Nongshang No. 1 have also launched operations one after another, and farmers in some places have walked into experience stores to get a feel for e-commerce. Yet farmers do not buy into e-commerce the way city dwellers do; farmers are still somewhat far from e-commerce.

Rural areas still cannot achieve the speed and convenience of e-commerce

What exactly are the real bottlenecks constraining rural e-commerce development? In what ways are farmers still far from e-commerce?

First, for rural e-commerce, logistics is the first hurdle for e-commerce entering the rural market. In particular, the "last mile" bottleneck in logistics and delivery is fairly prominent and is regarded as a major "weak link" that urgently needs to be addressed to advance rural e-commerce.

Second, investment in rural network infrastructure is insufficient. In some backward rural areas, low rural network coverage hinders farmers' use of the internet.

Third, farmers' weak or even nonexistent online consumption habits are also a constraining factor in current rural e-commerce development. Farmers are still accustomed to the old way of buying and selling at "market fairs" and trust more the transaction format of seeing the goods in person and exchanging cash for goods on the spot. They believe that goods bought online make it hard to determine quality and grade. In addition, farmers' habit of using passbooks also restricts online banking payments.

It can be seen that at this stage, the advantages of e-commerce in speed and convenience cannot yet be realized in most rural areas, and a process of improvement and cultivation is still needed.

Farmers' urgent need is to solve the difficulty of selling

The internet has shortened the distance between the market and consumers. However, the internet has not truly shortened the distance between the market and farmers. Farmers being far from e-commerce is reflected not only in hardware and habits; at this stage, farmers' needs are also a key factor causing farmers not to buy into e-commerce.

It is understood that rural e-commerce and agricultural-supply e-commerce are mostly aimed at tapping the consumption potential of the rural market and selling goods seamlessly into rural areas. However, for farmers at this stage, being able to sell agricultural products is far more urgent than buying things in. How to use the internet to solve the difficulty of selling is farmers' real need.

Last year, red dates in Linxian, Shanxi province, had a bumper harvest, but the result was a bumper harvest without increased income. Jujube farmers in mountainous areas generally operate as individual households on a small scale, without their own brands or QS certification. Due to information asymmetry, it is difficult for them to open up markets in big cities.

If farmers knew how to find suitable direct purchasing enterprises through rural e-commerce platforms, negotiate prices in advance, and organize many farming households to sell in a centralized way, thereby solving the problem of asymmetry in information resources and marketing resources, this would bring farmers relatively high returns.

E-commerce must get farmers "fired up"

Farmers' needs are exactly what agriculture-related enterprises should serve. Selling agricultural products to the cities through e-commerce channels is also an important part of building the rural e-commerce ecosystem and will be an entry point for e-commerce to open up the rural market. Truly achieving two-way circulation in the future, with daily necessities and agricultural supplies going to the countryside and agricultural products going to the cities, will be the direction that rural e-commerce and agricultural-supply e-commerce strive toward.

Right now, major e-commerce players in rural areas are in a market-expansion stage of losing money to gain attention, but farmers do not fully buy into e-commerce. It is a one-sided enthusiasm, and how to get farmers "fired up" has become the key. Therefore, if e-commerce is to go farther and last longer in rural areas, e-commerce must learn to "prescribe the right medicine for the illness."

On the one hand, efforts should focus on cultivating professional e-commerce technical talent, guiding agricultural entities, returning youth, college-graduate "village officials," and farmers who have changed careers or jobs to start e-commerce businesses, using e-commerce platforms to organize farmers into the market, and providing farmers with services in science and technology, information, capital, materials, and product sales.

On the other hand, for farmers, how to solve their needs is the most critical point. Farmers face falling grain prices and cheap fruit hurting farmers. Especially this year, with the prices of the three major staple grains falling, farmers' "difficulty of selling" problem is particularly prominent. This is also precisely what e-commerce most needs to solve. Through rural e-commerce platforms, more agricultural products can be sold, and farmers' difficulty of selling can be readily solved. Only when farmers' difficulty of selling is solved will they have the ability to buy daily necessities and buy agricultural supplies. For rural e-commerce, do not think about how to make money from farmers; rather, let farmers make money first and truly enjoy the convenience and benefits brought by e-commerce. Only then can a solid foundation be laid for the sound development of rural e-commerce. If agriculture prospers and farmers become rich, then agricultural enterprises will thrive. Only in this way can rural e-commerce and agricultural-supply e-commerce truly get a share of the rural market.