What problems in agricultural product e-commerce are triggered by tomatoes?
A very simple question: there are two tomatoes, and you are asked how much you would be willing to pay for each of them? The question is simple, but we usually find that we cannot answer it. Even in face-to-face trading at a vegetable market, such a question is hard to answer, let alone when we put it online.
The value of a tomato is determined by many factors: its size, its ripeness, its variety, how long it has been since it was picked, its taste, its appearance, its degree of damage, the buyer's preferences, the mood and atmosphere of both buyer and seller at the time, and so on. What is even harder is that there are no two identical tomatoes in this world, yet it is impossible for us to appraise every single one of them.
The standardization of agricultural products such as tomatoes is an unrealistic requirement, and as fresh vegetables, their shelf life is also a problem: as time goes on, the price will gradually fall, and in the end they may even become garbage. Buying and selling agricultural products online like industrial goods is also unrealistic; agricultural products need their own e-commerce trading methods and platforms that suit their characteristics.
To solve the problems of agricultural product e-commerce, making agricultural products standardized is clearly not the best solution. Perhaps this approach can be adopted for bulk grain-type agricultural products, but for fresh vegetables and fruits it is clearly inappropriate. Although greenhouse vegetables exist now, for ordinary farming households, to generally connect their vegetable plots with the market, the method that should be adopted needs to work on process information collection. The more information there is, the easier it is to make decisions. But proving things through testing and appraisal of agricultural products, especially small batches of fresh vegetables and fruits, before pushing them to market, clearly involves complicated procedures, too-high costs and too-long time, and it is impossible to test all agricultural products, so there is no real persuasiveness.
Whether it is market trading or e-commerce trading, in fact it is nothing more than a question of trust. If the buyer believes the information provided by the seller and accepts the price he offers, the transaction can be completed very quickly. Vegetables and fruits are foods that every household needs to consume all year round. If there were a platform that could, year in and year out, thoughtfully provide urban families with fresh vegetables and fruits, guarantee no pesticide residues and guarantee the use of organic fertilizer, it should be welcomed by urban residents. The collection and provision of process information can not only prove the production process and methods of agricultural products to consumers, but also cultivate consumers' attachment to agricultural products in advance, making them feel as if this vegetable plot belongs exclusively to their own home, and filling them with anticipation for the agricultural products about to be produced.
Although process management also requires investment, compared with the cost of testing and appraising agricultural products each time, and from the perspectives of convenience and timeliness, it has certain advantages. The long-term mechanism formed by process information is the foundation for building a stable consumer base for agricultural products, and is a necessary means for a trust platform for agricultural products.
The trading of agricultural products also cannot simply use express delivery like ordinary e-commerce. Instead, specialized arrangements must be made by category according to the condition of the agricultural products; otherwise, the loss of their freshness and integrity will lead to a decline in the value of the agricultural products. After harvest, agricultural products need certain pretreatment, washing or other methods, and then enter logistics after being boxed or packaged, and are delivered to the market or directly to users' homes. The value of agricultural products is in fact the embodiment of the results of the entire process operation. Unlike industrial goods, the circulation process of agricultural products is closely related to their final quality. Therefore, agricultural products must track not only the production process of the product, but also its circulation process. Only in this way can the value of agricultural products truly be delivered into the hands of customers.
For a long time we have positioned agricultural products as low-end products, with no pretreatment, no packaging and no logistics management, handling agricultural products casually and extensively. But agricultural products are closely tied to our daily lives, to our health and to the peace of our families. Many of the troubles in our lives stem from our food. Likewise, neglecting the value of agricultural products has led to seriously insufficient investment in agriculture and to the management of agricultural products remaining at a low level for a long time, so that the value of agricultural products cannot be truly reflected.
Most e-commerce today focuses on the trading part of commerce, but if true value delivery cannot be completed, the transaction loses its meaning. The challenge of agricultural product e-commerce is to manage and track the entire process of production and circulation of agricultural products, so that consumers can fully receive the value of agricultural products, so that farmers' labor results can be truly displayed, so that the value of agricultural products is no longer neglected because of poor management, so that extensive agriculture gradually becomes refined agriculture, and so that agriculture gradually moves toward modernization.
Only when the value of agriculture is truly affirmed do the basic conditions for solving the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers begin to exist.