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this year is a year of deep integration of agricultural product e-commerce and the rural economy, and the digital-real integration effect is becoming more and more apparent. according to business big data monitoring, my country's agricultural product online retail sales increased by 20.1% year-on-year from january to july. as of june 2024, the number of rural online merchants nationwide reached 18.532 million, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%.

this year's central document no. 1 emphasized the need to "implement the rural e-commerce high-quality development project." in march this year, the ministry of commerce and nine other departments jointly issued the "implementation opinions on promoting the high-quality development of rural e-commerce," making systematic plans to promote the high-quality development of rural e-commerce.

"seizing the opportunity of digitalization, agricultural products e-commerce has formed new quality productivity, and it has played an increasingly important role in rural revitalization and consumption promotion, and its development prospects are very broad." at the china agricultural products e-commerce high-level seminar on the first half of 2024 held recently, industry authorities, e-commerce platforms and industry experts analyzed the new trends and opportunities in the development of agricultural products e-commerce this year, and discussed new paths for high-quality development of the industry.

agricultural products e-commerce demonstrates new quality productivity

today, as the wave of digitalization sweeps across the world, more and more specialty agricultural products such as hainan mangoes, zhejiang anji white tea, hubei zigui spring oranges, shandong penglai cherries, gansu minqin honeydew melons, and sichuan panzhihua mangoes are leaving their places of origin, crossing mountains and rivers, being seen and recognized by consumers, and appearing on the tables of more people.

in 2023, the national online retail sales of agricultural products will reach 587.03 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5% ​​over 2022. while sales are growing, agricultural product e-commerce is also further promoting the revitalization of rural industries and the creation of agricultural product brands.

taking the xiangshan red beauty tangerines, which are sold at the price of "hermes among oranges", as an example, according to shi tongxin, an expert from alibaba's digital rural business unit, alibaba cooperated with xiangshan county to use big data analysis to standardize products, and then through global marketing, created creative commercials for young users born after 1985 and "generation z", and invited top celebrity anchors to promote the products, successfully helping the influence of the xiangshan red beauty production area radiate from zhejiang province to the whole country.

relevant departments have also explored the deep integration of digital technology and agriculture. in recent years, the ministry of commerce has included "digital commerce to revitalize agriculture" as one of the five actions for digital commerce construction, cultivating new rural industries and new formats, enhancing the ability of digital commerce to serve rural revitalization, and promoting the digital transformation and development of rural industries. the "digital commerce to revitalize agriculture" program is carried out by local commerce authorities under the guidance of the department of e-commerce and informatization of the ministry of commerce, focusing on the central and western regions, providing grassroots e-commerce services that benefit the people and enterprises, and has held 18 events in 17 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

in the first half of this year, "digital commerce to revitalize agriculture" went deep into hunan and hubei to support high-quality agricultural products industrial belts, aggregated agricultural product demand and agricultural production capacity, and drove the growth of agricultural products online retail sales by 21.7%, and cumulatively supported more than 8,700 regional public brands of agricultural products.

"agricultural products e-commerce is a new type of productivity in the agricultural field. it has promoted the digital transformation of rural industries and is a strategic choice to adapt to the deep integration and development of the digital economy and the real economy." hong tao, president of the china food (agricultural products) safety e-commerce research institute and director of the institute of economics at beijing technology and business university, released the "2024 china agricultural products e-commerce development report" at the seminar and pointed out that in the next stage, the key tasks of developing agricultural products e-commerce should shift to the digitalization of information services for "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", smart agriculture, and the digitalization of various links such as production, processing, marketing, logistics, and branding, so as to achieve an overall transformation of the industrial form.

build an efficient rural e-commerce service system

the third plenary session of the 20th cpc central committee proposed to "improve the system and mechanism for developing new quality productivity in accordance with local conditions" and "improve the system to promote the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy", and stressed the need to "improve the circulation system, accelerate the development of the internet of things, improve the integrated circulation rules and standards, and reduce the logistics costs of the whole society". "these strategic deployments have pointed out the direction and put forward new requirements for promoting the reform and innovation of agricultural product e-commerce." said wang xiaobing, director and party secretary of the information center of the ministry of agriculture and rural affairs.

it is worth mentioning that the above report shows that the widespread application of ai big models in the field of agricultural products e-commerce has become a new highlight, and its role in reducing logistics costs and increasing efficiency is prominent. at the same time, the report also mentioned that some current agricultural products e-commerce companies still have problems such as homogeneous competition, such as focusing on production rather than circulation, focusing on products rather than services, experience, and scene standards, and focusing on product appearance rather than quality and traceability, resulting in high competition costs and low benefits.

it is understood that the previously issued "implementation opinions on promoting the high-quality development of rural e-commerce" clearly stated that it will take five years to basically establish a rural e-commerce service system with complete facilities, active entities, smooth circulation and efficient services.

yuan dengke, a member of the digital commerce industry standardization technical committee of the ministry of commerce, said that standards lead the digital and green development of agricultural product e-commerce, which is an important part of promoting agriculture through digital commerce and building a strong agricultural country. we should promote the integration of agricultural product circulation with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and cloud computing, and build core competitiveness with new quality productivity standards. actively explore the use of shared logistics vehicles for agricultural product circulation, standardize and green application pilot demonstration cases, and promote their application throughout the industry, which will have a positive effect on reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

wang xiaobing said that in the next step, we should focus on the implementation of the rural e-commerce high-quality development project, steadily promote the construction of county-level e-commerce live broadcast bases, and accelerate the development of rural specialty online sales. deeply implement the agricultural product "out of the village and into the city" project, promote the intelligent upgrading and transformation of national agricultural product production areas, strengthen the information construction of storage, preservation and cold chain logistics in agricultural product production areas, create a market-oriented, data-driven, efficient and collaborative intelligent supply chain, and promote smooth connection between production and sales, high quality and high price. strengthen the application of modern information technologies such as big data, the internet of things, and blockchain, and improve the quality and safety traceability system of agricultural products to ensure that consumers can eat with peace of mind.

■ our reporter bai shujie