The rapid development of agricultural e-commerce is becoming an emerging force changing the future of rural areas
The "Double Eleven" transaction volume of 57.1 billion yuan, Alibaba's positioning of agriculture-related e-commerce as a blue ocean of the future, and the rapidly growing Taobao villages and Taobao towns... all bear witness to the rapid development of agricultural e-commerce.
Agriculture-related e-commerce is not merely an expansion of rural space and the consumer market; more importantly, it breaks down information asymmetry, provides grassroots farmers with a brand-new space of freedom, and injects new vitality into rural social development. Agriculture-related e-commerce is becoming an emerging force changing the future of rural areas. When the "genes" of e-commerce merge into ancient rural society, what changes will occur?
The agricultural product sales landscape may face transformation
The shop owner with the online name "Counterclockwise" is a university graduate from Luliang, Shanxi. Her name is Zhang Meili. After graduating from university, she chose to open an online store, selling her family's honey, Luliang's flaxseed oil, Linxian's sheet jelly, and other local specialties across the country.
In the past, the family's honey often could not be sold, or good honey could not fetch a good price. Now, "Counterclockwise" has named her family's honey "Zhang Ma's Honey" and posted the production process and production environment online one by one. The pure natural product is very popular. Zhang Ma's honey has never worried about selling again, and the family no longer has to go out to work. They live happily together.
At present, more and more people, like "Counterclockwise," are opening online sales channels for their own agricultural products. They integrate planting, processing, production, and sales, forming a closed industrial chain. As the internet moves from the web1.0 era into the web2.0 and even web3.0 era, opening an online store is becoming a way of life in rural areas, profoundly affecting people's lives and thinking.
Shop owner Wang Zhiqiang, who has already upgraded to "five crowns," now sells more than just his own products. He is helping farmers in Shanxi "pioneer" their own brands. Di Xinsheng from Nangaofu Village, Yuanping, Xinzhou City, put his family's free-range eggs in Wang Zhiqiang's online store. When a buyer places an order, Di Xinsheng ships directly from Yuanping. This ensures the quality of the eggs and smooths the sales channel, making both buyers and sellers happy.
Also, the apples of Ji County, Linfen, are very famous, as everyone knows. However, Wang Jixiang, who lives in Shangping Village, Ji County, encountered the problem of "beauties hidden in deep boudoirs go unrecognized" - good apples could not fetch a good price. So he cooperated with Wang Zhiqiang, managing the fruit trees strictly according to ecological and green standards, and insisting every year on picking only when fully ripe. Now, Wang Zhiqiang has contracted 30 mu of apple orchards in Shangping Village, with no worries about buying or selling.
In "Yue Jiangjun's" store, the owner has brought organic small yellow ginger to annual sales of 15 million yuan. He has his own plantation, can take reservations for planting, and can also entrust processing. The presale model launched by "Yue Jiangjun" in the store provides sellers with a production model of selling first and supplying later, and provides buyers with higher-quality and highly distinctive products. This model can collect consumer demand in advance, take orders first, and then produce according to volume, greatly reducing inventory pressure and avoiding production risks.
The enormous development potential of the internet is revolutionary. In the distance between one mouse and another, the world is connected through clicks. On an e-commerce platform in which almost everyone participates, the agricultural product sales landscape is facing transformation.
Farmers' ways of thinking and concepts are quietly changing
Grassroots farmers have found a place to display their talents by starting businesses through e-commerce. With one network cable connected, they can buy and sell globally. The threshold of the market, the size of the platform, the flow of capital, the real distance, the number of connections... are all becoming more diverse, more equal, and more open on an e-commerce platform just one screen away. Markets across the province, the whole country, and even the globe can connect here.
In the just-concluded "Double Eleven," Shanxi Gongtianxia Trading Co., Ltd. sold our province's specialties and agricultural products from outside the province through the Gongtianxia Specialty Network platform and cooperative channels, with sales exceeding 40 million yuan. Liu Yafeng is a typical representative among them. She is from Pingyao, Shanxi, has her own Weidian store, and artistically operates handmade soap she makes herself. At the same time, all her daily necessities, including grains and miscellaneous cereals, are purchased online.
E-commerce allows farmers to trade with remote business partners without leaving home, bargain on an equal footing, form orders, and freely enjoy a completely new way of trading. Many rural online sellers do not need to leave the countryside or stay away from their relatives. They run their own online stores and enjoy the opportunities and changes brought by informatization. Their views on the market, resources, business, and life are undergoing rapid changes.
However, Shanxi's current situation is still at the stage of consumption outflow. The 2013 Taobao agricultural product sales map shows that the products Shanxi sells are mainly dates and millet, belonging to one of the regions with the lowest transaction volumes nationwide.
The rural e-commerce consumption report released by AliResearch shows that Taobao's rural online shopping share was 8.6% in 2013, but it shows a growth trend. Rural residents' acceptance of the online shopping model reached 84.41%, and per capita online shopping spending is predicted to be between 500 yuan and 2,000 yuan. It is expected to exceed 460 billion in 2016.
It is precisely because agriculture-related e-commerce is seen as one of the three future development directions advancing side by side with big data business and cross-border e-commerce services that Alibaba launched the "Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages" plan in October 2014, and will invest 10 billion yuan over 3 to 5 years to establish 1,000 county-level operation centers and 100,000 village-level service stations. This means Alibaba will push its supply chain deep down into the rural market and, in the form of offline service entities, extend its e-commerce network to cover 1/3 of the country's counties and 1/6 of rural areas.
In the global village just one screen away, agriculture-related e-commerce is becoming an emerging force changing the future of rural areas.
E-commerce boosts rural economic and social transformation
Wang Zhiqiang moved his Taobao store to the city, and his children and wife also went to live in the city. His planting base, processing workshop, and the uncles and aunts who work the land all arrange production and life around his Taobao store in Linxian. University graduate Wang Jixiang also joined forces with Wang Zhiqiang, carrying his own dream, and returned to his hometown to "shout" for apples.
Whether growing apples, raising free-range chickens, brewing honey, or packaging, processing, and transporting, they are all masters of their own lives. They have grasped more information and gained more say, and what they connect to is a vast market beyond imagination.
For rural online sellers, e-commerce is no longer an external factor, still less something forcibly imposed. On the contrary, it has become a way of working and a livelihood they actively choose according to their own internal needs. Wang Xiangdong, director of the Informatization Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "What e-commerce brings to farmers is not only quantitative change in trading radius and trading scale, but also qualitative change in the right to order and the right to price when connecting to the market." However, on such a large platform, we should still pay attention to the natural weaknesses of the rural market. For example, in terms of consumption, the commercial foundation of the rural market is weak, and farmers' consumer demand cannot be satisfied; in the production stage, the circulation efficiency of rural means of production is low, market information lags, and farmers still have to "pay the bill" for various costs; in the sales stage, there is still the phenomenon of increased output without increased income, and sales channels for high-value-added agricultural products are not smooth either.
More and more e-commerce participants among the rural population have therefore changed their social identities, transforming from farmers into online sellers, workers, customer service staff, service providers, and brokers. They have their own circles. To discuss development strategies and solve problems in development, they fly around from time to time, seeking direction for their businesses by questioning one another. They have their own e-commerce conferences and summit forums. Through the flow of various factors between urban and rural areas, they stimulate the potential hidden in the countryside. Their successes also inspire relatives and friends around them and attract more farmers to join rural e-commerce.
When talking about the impact of agricultural e-commerce on the rural economy and society, Wang Xiangdong believes that "the application and development of the internet and e-commerce has reached the stage of natural expansion from cities to villages. E-commerce's role in boosting rural economic and social transformation is not limited to the surface of rural economic and social activities; it also changes the deep structure of rural areas. The intervention of the element 'network' overcomes farmers' disadvantaged position in information and provides a new possibility and a realistic means." Reporter Zhang Xiaomin