Agricultural products e-commerce has become a new engine of the county economy

Professor Hong Tao, director of the Institute of Business Economics, Beijing Technology and Business University

At present, China's agricultural products e-commerce shows a high-speed development trend, 6 consecutive years of steady growth, as a new engine of county economic development, the development of agricultural products e-commerce is in a period
of rapid growth.
However, it is unavoidable that some new situations are also emerging, for example, only in terms of fresh food, in recent years, some fresh e-commerce companies have successively lost money, which reflects the problems in the development of agricultural product e-commerce also need to be highly vigilant, advocating the new culture of digital agricultural product e-commerce, which is the key to
the digital, green and sustainable development of agricultural product e-commerce.

28 years of development

In 1994, the China Agricultural Information Network and the China Agricultural Science and Technology Information Network were opened one after another, and it has been 28 years
since the informatization of agricultural products in China began.
In 1995, Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange Market Jicheng Information Network (now China Grain Network) was established, and in December 1998, the first transaction on the grain network was successful, when Xinhua News Agency reported that "grain flows on the Internet" and became an important news
in the world.
In 1999, cotton electronic trading appeared, and since then, China's agricultural products e-commerce has shown a rapid development trend
.

In 2005, online trading of fresh produce appeared
.
In 2012, online trading of branded agricultural products (Chu Orange into Beijing, Lychee War) appeared
.
In 2013, 18 e-commerce models for agricultural products emerged; In 2014, the government promoted the start of e-commerce into rural comprehensive demonstration, and a large number of agricultural product e-commerce financing entered the climax
.
In 2015, six major e-commerce giants entered the rural market; In 2015, Alibaba held shares in Suning, Jingdong invested in Yonghui and invested in Tiantian Orchard; In 2018, China's agricultural product e-commerce entered a new stage
of digital agricultural product e-commerce.

In 2020, e-commerce poverty alleviation (including consumption poverty alleviation) entered a new stage, and in 2021, agricultural product e-commerce entered a new historical period of empowering rural revitalization, during which the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance and the State Council Poverty Alleviation Office carried out the activity of e-commerce into rural comprehensive demonstration counties from 2014 to 2021, with 1,647 counties participating; The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs promoted the project of information entering villages and households and the pilot project of agricultural products leaving villages and cities, and identified 106 rural e-commerce bases
in 2021.

China's agricultural products e-commerce has achieved good results and played an important role
in empowering e-commerce to alleviate poverty and empower rural revitalization.
However, there are also many problems in the field of agricultural product e-commerce, such as small or negative profits in the main business, relying on other secondary businesses to obtain corresponding benefits, or obtaining excess profits through unrelated businesses to make up for the deficiency
.
This has led to the disruption of the normal competition order in the main business field, resulting in a large number of enterprises losing money and going bankrupt, resulting in a large number of unemployment
.
What's more, some just draw a beautiful picture, but do not achieve it down-to-earth, just to obtain venture capital funds, or go public to obtain a large amount of financing, thus playing the role of
"circle money".

Under the squeeze of capital, in the first half of 2022, eBay, which has a 23-year history of e-commerce, closed down at a loss and announced its closure due to "water and soil discomfort"; In the past, the "largest e-commerce platform" in China, HC network telemarketing business was shut down
.

At the end of June 2022, Daily Fresh adjusted its front-end warehouse business and stopped its Expressway business, but next-day delivery and other businesses were not affected
.
But after the notice came out, there was a "chain" closure phenomenon
in many places.

After two "blowouts" of fresh food e-commerce and community e-commerce, there will be another "blowout" in pre-made vegetable e-commerce in 2022, and round after round and multiple booms have led to serious "repeated construction and convergent investment", resulting in a "homogenized" competition pattern, resulting in excessive competition in the e-commerce field and operational losses and closure
.
In the first half of 2022, the annual reports of many large platforms such as Ali, JD.
com, Suning, Pinduoduo, and Meituan were released, and the number of platforms with losses increased
relatively.

The above phenomenon fully shows the lack of a good agricultural product e-commerce culture in the field of agricultural product e-commerce, which seriously affects the sustainable development of
agricultural product e-commerce.

In 2020, China successfully completed poverty alleviation and achieved the goal of moderate prosperity, and in 2021, China will enter a new stage of development of
comprehensive rural revitalization.
In the new stage of development, it is necessary to accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading of agricultural product e-commerce, and achieve new requirements of "effective connection" in the transformation: vertically, the transformation should achieve the "effective connection" of poverty alleviation to rural revitalization; Horizontally, agricultural product e-commerce urgently needs the emergence
of a "comprehensive coordination" model.

Advocate the spiritual core of the new digital culture

From poverty alleviation to rural revitalization, agricultural product e-commerce has made indispensable contributions, in the new era and new journey, advocating the new culture of digital agricultural product e-commerce, we can mainly start from the following contents:

Advocate a positive and healthy new culture of digital agricultural product e-commerce This includes the "commodity culture, marketing culture, brand culture, environmental culture and ethical culture" of digital agricultural products, of which the socialist core values of ethical and moral culture are the core of digital agricultural product e-commerce culture, running through the whole process
of the new culture of digital agricultural product e-commerce.

If we talk more about the e-commerce culture of digital agricultural products, there are commodity culture, transaction culture, material distribution culture, settlement culture, environmental culture and governance culture of agricultural product e-commerce, and we are now undergoing digital transformation in the process of digital transformation, both the real economy and the network economy are undergoing digital transformation
.

Advocate digital agricultural products as the core content of digital village construction China's rural revitalization is mainly composed of 20 characters in five aspects: prosperous industry, ecological livability, civilized rural style, rich life, and effective
governance.
In the five aspects of rural revitalization, industrial prosperity is the core, and agricultural products are the core
in industrial prosperity.
Digital agricultural product e-commerce should actively empower the development of
digital rural revitalization and rural revitalization.

Advocate the exploration of a variety of digital agricultural product e-commerce models Advocate a variety of agricultural product e-commerce models, such as from the perspective of trading, there are agricultural products online futures trading, agricultural products bulk electronic trading, agricultural products B2B commodity trading, agricultural products online retail, fresh agricultural products e-commerce, agricultural products community group buying, agricultural products cross-border e-commerce, agricultural products O2O, food takeaway e-commerce, etc
.
For example, the industrial Internet model includes the network library, Kunming flower auction center, the national cotton trading market, Luyu tea industry trading center, etc.
, and the online retail of agricultural products includes B2C, C2B, O2O, as well as takeaway and e-commerce live broadcast models
.
These diverse digital agricultural product e-commerce models, we advocate the formation of a good ecological relationship, that is, interconnected ecological relationship
.

Advocate the provision of high-quality agricultural products Here include quality physical agricultural products, quality service agricultural products, quality experience agricultural products, we advocate standardized production (including standardized planting, breeding, processing), standardized circulation, standardized consumption
.
Guaranteed seven-day no-reason returns
.
Practice has proved that after the standardization of agricultural products is really done, there are few returns and exchanges in
the transaction process.
To advocate a new culture is to raise this demand a little higher
.
Moreover, in the national "14th Five-Year Plan" development plan, standardization will receive more and more attention
.
In China's "14th Five-Year Plan", there are 35 places and 40 times mentioned the construction
of standardization.

Advocate e-commerce live streaming of agricultural products E-commerce live streaming should follow national laws, regulations, and standards to carry out activities, and explore effective models
for standardized and orderly live video live marketing.
Now mobile phones have become farmers' new agricultural tools, live broadcast has become farmers' new agricultural work, digital has become farmers' new agricultural materials, and culture has become farmers' new life
.
In 2020, live streaming is the biggest highlight, with 24 million live broadcasts throughout the year, and live streaming is still very active in 2021, with more than 60 million live streaming e-commerce in
the first half of 2022.
On the days of the Farmers' Harvest Festival, most places in rural areas are engaged in live broadcast activities, so we must advocate the new cultural concept of
live broadcast e-commerce.

Advocate standardized and civilized management Digital agricultural products should be regarded as the carrier of spreading socialist spiritual civilization and the specific content
of a better life.
In recent years, we have often said that we have entered the era of "strict supervision", but the normalization of "strict supervision" has put forward new requirements
for us.

Advocate the elimination of monopoly, tax evasion and other behaviors We should advocate the elimination of vicious monopoly, tax evasion, order fraud, low-price competition, illegal leakage of consumer information, big data killing, sales of counterfeit and inferior sales, and discounting the quality of after-sales service
.

Explore a new model of digital agricultural products e-commerce

Since 2018, various places have carried out new cultural exploration of digital agricultural product e-commerce and innovated many new models
.
For example, Ali, Jingdong, Pinduoduo, Huinong.
com, Supply and Marketing e-Home, China Post, etc
.
Among them, some cases have reference significance
.
For example, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Guangdong Province innovatively proposed to build a "12221" market system for agricultural products and promote the high-quality development of rural characteristic industries.
"1" Build a big data of
agricultural products.
"2" Set up two teams
of buyers in the sales area and agents in the production area.
"2" Expand the two major markets
of sales area and production area.
"2" Plan two activities
for buyers to enter the production area and agricultural products to enter the big market.
"1" to achieve a package of goals
such as brand building, sales increase, market guidance, variety improvement, and farmers' prosperity.

In 2021, Guangdong Province achieved the sales target of 1.
47 million tons of lychee, achieving an output value of 14.
08 billion yuan, and fruit farmers praised "lychee sold at the level"
.
In 2021, Guangdong lychee overseas market development achieved the best results in history, exports to more than 20 countries and regions, the annual fresh lychee export volume accounted for more than 40% of the country, 9254.
8 tons, an increase of 56.
8%, the export volume ranked first in the country, the export volume reached 27.
96 million US dollars, an increase of 67.
6%.

Longnan City, Gansu Province was originally a poor area, in 2013 to determine the e-commerce development strategy, in 2017 the country's first e-commerce development bureau was established, Longnan City through the adoption of e-commerce empowerment to get rid of poverty and get rich, formed a unique "Longnan model", become the national poverty alleviation advanced collective, 2020 Global Poverty Reduction Forum held
in Longnan.
The "Longnan model" has produced a cultural atmosphere
of "mass e-commerce" that is "born in the mountains, standing in poverty alleviation, becoming innovative and expensive in humanization".

Promoting agricultural barter through new barter is a new concept and new culture, new barter includes product barter in the production process, commodity barter in the circulation process, service barter (including experience) in the service process, asset barter in production factors, and resource barter in a variety of resources, "so that the society has no inventory, so that the society is not idle", so that the high-quality development of the economy will enter the normal track
。 Jinshang Tong barter trade is that in the Jinshang Tong Agricultural and Easy Warehouse Rural Exchange Station, agricultural products barter, renewable resources barter, garbage barter, can achieve barter products - base supply, barter commodities - factory direct supply, easy service - institutional direct supply, easy knowledge - direct supply
from universities.

China's agriculture and rural areas have entered a new era of development, and the healthy development of rural e-commerce service system will become an important force
in promoting the process of rural revitalization.

China Food News (November 04, 2022, Edition 07).

(Editor: Gao Na)