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Farmers look to the Internet for bumper harvest
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Agriculture is the latest sector of China’s economy to attract young entrepreneurs eager to apply their modern cyber-skills to the most ancient of industries.
Farming has long been a cooperative venture in China. Now, tech-savvy farmers are thriving, raising both their own and their neighbors’ incomes in the process.
Cao Xibin, 24, quit a well-paid job as an investment fund manager last year and relocated to remote Xiushan County in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality to build an e-commerce platform.
Within a year, he had raised millions of yuan in investment and sold more than 2 million eggs — gathered from local villagers and distributed to cities across the country.
Although farming has been booming for more than three decades, it has not kept pace with demographic changes and advances in technology. Inefficient sales channels, a shrinking labor force and financing difficulties have been squeezing farmers’ earnings and dragging down the rural economy.
The mean per capita disposable income of rural residents rose 9 percent last year to 10,489 yuan (US$1,650), but was still less than half the figure for those in urban areas.
The Internet, however, is helping to change that.
China’s e-commerce heavyweight Alibaba said it now has more than 1.6 million online stores selling farm produce on its platforms, and put the value of rural e-commerce at 140 billion yuan last year.
Former office worker Jiang Yi returned to his hometown in Chongqing in 2008 to start a business growing exotic trees. At first, his sales were poor, but in 2013, he went online and his annual revenue promptly rose tenfold to more than 10 million yuan.
“Eighty percent of my sales were to people I found on WeChat and QQ,” he said.
Thousands of farmers are now keen to learn what the Internet can do for them.
“Two years ago I was just a farmer. I didn’t know what e-commerce was,” said Yang Jun from Xiushan County.
“We used to talk about how to grow better crops, but now we discuss how to promote them online,” he said.
Alibaba said it will invest 10 billion yuan to open 100,000 village service centers in the coming years, while JD.com said it plans to hire 100,000 people as agents to expand its operations in 100,000 villages this year alone.
Vice Premier Wang Yang said in Beijing yesterday that the government should improve the rural Internet infrastructure and logistics, nurture tech-savvy farmers, and encourage big data in agriculture.
He also encouraged companies to use technology to improve their supply chains, study the latest techniques and find the most appropriate services for their needs.
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