Agricultural products compete to "touch the net" and face four challenges

Although there are some forms of agricultural cooperatives in China, more than 70% of agricultural products are still provided by retail investors

Yesterday, another e-commerce platform for agricultural products was launched. The online trading platform of agricultural products, Shanghai Wuxin Agricultural Products Trading Online, which focuses on spot trading. Like many e-commerce websites of agricultural products at present, Wuxin Agricultural Products Trading Online also wants to gain an opportunity in the field of e-commerce of agricultural products that has not been truly developed.

However, up to now, there are not many e-commerce platforms for agricultural products that can really succeed. Industry insiders said that behind the "succession" of many e-commerce companies for agricultural products, the difficulties in industrial development were highlighted. To succeed in e-commerce for agricultural products, it still needed to cross four mountains.

E-commerce of agricultural products is cold

Lin Yuan, chairman of Wuxin Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wuxin Electronic"), told China Business Daily that Wuxin Agricultural Products Trading Network had been put into trial operation for one month before it was officially launched, with a turnover of only 40 million yuan. According to the agency fee charged by the enterprise at present, only 240000 yuan has been recorded. Up to now, the company has invested 156 million yuan in this project. This kind of benefit worries Linyuan. Although it was full of confidence at the beginning, if it continues to maintain this kind of benefit, it is difficult for the enterprise funds to support for too long.

Like most companies that have entered the e-commerce field of agricultural products before, Lin Yuan believes that this field has great potential. At present, the traditional trading channels of agricultural products in China are complex, with many links and high circulation costs. Lin Yuan, who has been engaged in the wholesale of agricultural products, told the reporter that according to the current circulation channel, taking vegetables as an example, the local purchasers first buy them from local farmers or agricultural cooperatives, and then sell them to large agricultural product origin markets (such as Shandong Shouguang Vegetable Wholesale Market, etc.) at an increase of 5%. The origin wholesalers sell them to the local wholesale market at an increase of 18% - 20%, and the local distributors sell them to consumers at an increase of 35% - 40%, During this period, it is not ruled out that there are more dealers who increase prices layer by layer. When vegetables reach consumers through such circulation channels, the price is at least twice as high as when farmers sell them.

Through the agricultural products online trading platform, a large number of intermediate channels can be saved, and the agricultural cooperatives can be realized to the terminal sales market. Lin Yuan estimated that the price of agricultural products could be reduced by at least 30% through the online trading platform.

Yu Jianyang, deputy general manager of Wuxin Electronics, said that this also has the advantages of optimizing the allocation of agricultural products resources and saving agricultural products logistics costs.

However, in front of the seemingly beautiful blueprint, both suppliers and sellers (agricultural cooperatives, agricultural products production and processing enterprises, etc.) and buyers (agricultural products wholesalers, distributors) are in a fog. In fact, up to now, there are few large-scale e-commerce platforms for agricultural products in China. There are still many difficulties to overcome in order to achieve large-scale e-commerce for agricultural products.

Four challenges

In front of e-commerce of domestic agricultural products, the first problem is standardization. Although the mode of Wuxin Electronics is spot trading, the buyers at the other end of the city can't know the advantages and disadvantages of the seller's products, and some wholesalers have expressed similar concerns. Therefore, it is necessary to standardize agricultural products, but this has great difficulties. Relevant agricultural experts told reporters that although e-commerce is a major trend, there is still a long way to go to standardize agricultural products, and it is difficult to realize online transactions without standardization.

Secondly, the quality control of agricultural products is also a big problem in front of the agricultural products trading platform. As the first responsible person for food safety, the e-commerce platform must control the quality and safety of agricultural products sold online. Once the platform is large, enterprises must invest a lot of energy to ensure food safety.

How to connect many scattered farmers and consumers is also a big problem. Although there are some forms of agricultural cooperatives in China, more than 70% of agricultural products are still provided by retail investors, and there are a large number of consumers at the end of the consumer market. How to connect both ends of demand is a big problem.

In addition, the profit model also needs to be explored. Yu Jianyang revealed that in the future, the company will eventually develop into an optimized allocation company of agricultural products resources and make profits by charging logistics distribution fees, which will test the company's logistics distribution and resource integration capabilities. At present, logistics is a big problem for all e-commerce platforms.

(China Business Daily)