The story of Internet agriculture begins.

Thousands of years have passed since Shennong invented slash-and-burn cultivation to teach people to reclaim wasteland and grow food crops, the pattern of China's small-scale peasant economy has basically not changed. When agriculture encounters the Internet, chemical reactions occur. Facilitate, real-time, perceptual, connected, intelligent. Everything is innovating the inherent industrial model of agriculture and promoting the acceleration of China's agriculture to modernization.

China's agricultural modernization cannot be achieved overnight. How can the Internet change this most backward industry? The answer is to start with the end link that is most easily reformed. Exploration has begun, the Internet agricultural service industry, represented by agricultural e-commerce and rural Internet finance, is on the rise, and "Internet + Agriculture" has taken the first step.

Agricultural e-commerce competes for trillions of yuan of "cake"

With the acceleration of land transfer, the main body of agricultural production and management in China is also changing, with the rapid rise of large growers, family farms and rural cooperatives, and the traditional "production-dealer-grower" business model of agricultural enterprises is changing. Agricultural materials will enter the stage of direct supply to large households. Agricultural e-commerce platform is a channel that can provide direct sales.

What is the scale of the agricultural market and how much potential can be tapped by agricultural e-commerce?

Luo Wensheng, vice president of Kim Jong Da, calculated an account for the reporter of the Shanghai Stock Exchange: at present, the national cultivated land planting cost is about 120 billion yuan, the fertilizer cost is 630 billion yuan, the pesticide cost is 120 billion yuan, the page fertilizer cost is 30 billion yuan, and the seed mixing agent is 60 billion yuan, which adds up to 960 billion yuan. "what a big market this is! the prospect of agricultural materials e-commerce market is very broad."

This is only a relatively conservative estimate. According to estimates from Ping an Securities, Qilu Securities and other institutions, the market size of chemical fertilizer, seed and feed agricultural materials alone exceeds one trillion yuan.

It is precisely because of the great potential that leading enterprises in the field of agricultural materials have "touched the net" one after another. Since the beginning of this year, the intensity of investment has been accelerated and increased.

Chemical fertilizer production leading enterprises Kim Jong-da, Batian shares, Sirte and so on have entered the field of e-commerce. Kim Jong-da's controlling shareholders have made a total investment of 2 billion yuan this year to build "Agricultural Merchants 1", which is currently the largest investment in agricultural e-commerce platform.

After Barfield acquired Jinhe Tiancheng, which focuses on agricultural informatization last year, it is actively in the layout of the Internet of things, big data, mobile Internet and agricultural materials trading platform. Sirte also set up an e-commerce company at the beginning of this year to create an "O2O" agricultural e-commerce service platform.

Pesticide leader Nuopxin and Huifeng shares have also accelerated the layout of electric commerce since last year. Since the launch of Nongyi Network, a subsidiary of Huifeng, in November last year, the development of e-commerce business has far exceeded expectations. At the end of March this year, Nuopxin conducted a public test on Nongji Network, an agricultural e-commerce platform in which it holds a 100% stake.

A reporter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange News also found that the positioning of e-commerce by agricultural enterprises is not a pure "sales platform", but a "service platform" that integrates agricultural material supply, information management services, and financial support. Many enterprises are accelerating the transformation from agricultural producers and sellers to service providers.

On May 11, Nuopxin announced that it would increase its investment in Shenzhen Tianquan Agricultural Service Co., Ltd. with its own capital of RMB 330 million, laying out the field of Internet agricultural services. As early as February, Stanley invested 500 million yuan to set up an agricultural service company, mainly providing agricultural planting services and agricultural financial services.

"Chemical fertilizer is a trillion-level market, and there is a lot of tens of billions of dollars in it. But agricultural services are on a trillion-level scale, and we can achieve hundreds of billions of dollars." Stanley President Gao Jinhua expressed his confidence in the transformation to an agricultural material service provider to a reporter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

At a pig farm on the outskirts of Langfang, senior executives of Ouhua Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company demonstrated to the reporter how to use pig networking to monitor pig stock, feed consumption, and epidemic warning.

Just on Tuesday, Dabei Nong Group officially launched Pig Internet version 2.0 and released the mobile version of APP Zhi Nong Tong. Xue Suwen, executive vice president of Dabei Nong, told the Shanghai Securities News, "Pig networking is an entrance. We want to build a smart Dabei agricultural ecosystem through pig networking, pig trading (Nongxin Mall) and Pig Finance (Nongxin Finance)."

A reporter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange News also found such a phenomenon in the survey that agricultural enterprises generally believe that the Internet is only a carrier, and that the core competitive elements of agricultural e-commerce still come from offline. "unlike other industrial products, the sales of agricultural products cannot rely solely on online channels. Farmers are afraid of buying fake seeds and pesticides. They are more dependent on acquaintance economy, so the role of distribution outlets is irreplaceable." Gao Jinhua said.

Kim Jong Da Dong Mi and Deputy General Manager Cui Bin also told the Shanghai Stock Exchange reporter, "the company will soon launch an agricultural material platform, we only use it as a means of service, but the real core competitiveness is still in the distribution channel." The company has a secondary dealer team of 100000 people.

"pain point" becomes "bright spot"

In the process of visiting enterprises, a reporter from the Shanghai Securities News learned that in many areas of agricultural services, enterprises are most interested and the most indispensable link in the Internet layout of agricultural enterprises is financial services.

"after the transfer of land, we found that there was a more urgent demand than agricultural services, that is, the funding gap. at present, farmers' loans are very difficult to obtain, because the credit process in rural areas is very difficult, and banks rarely lend. This is the pain point of agriculture." Zhang Lei, vice president of Stanley, told the Shanghai Stock Exchange News reporter.

Since last year, Stanley has been trying to work with distributors to provide small loans to users in addition to selling chemical fertilizers. "the most difficult thing in rural finance is credit investigation. We have a local dealer team, we are familiar with our users, and we can give full play to our advantages in the credit investigation process, and dealers are transforming." Zhang Lei said.

When the wave of "Internet + Agriculture" hit, some enterprises' understanding of it is still in the construction of websites and APP, "but these are actually limited to the company's valuation, unless an exit for cash is found. Now the export of cash has been found, that is, Internet finance." Said Gong Yanhai, an agricultural analyst at Shen Wanhongyuan Securities.

"who is the leader of rural finance, who is the leader of the industrial chain. Whoever makes full use of the leverage of rural finance will be in an invincible position in the industrial competition." Xue Suwen, who has a financial education background, pointed out that finance is likely to become the commanding height of industrial services.

It is based on this understanding that Da Bei Nong innovated the profit model and launched a series of Internet financial products, such as NongFubao with financial management and payment functions, payment platform Nongfutong, agricultural bank loan in rural credit, agricultural loan, support money and so on.

"Dabinong has set up a microfinance company and will focus on its own 'agricultural bank loan' this year," Xue Suwen told the Shanghai Securities News. in addition, agricultural loans will be launched in the second half of the year, which is a P2P model, which we think is the most potential and promising piece. "

In addition to Stanley and Dabei Nong, the Shanghai Securities News reporter combed and found that at present, A-share agricultural listed companies such as Huifeng shares, Kim Jong-da, Batian shares, New Hope, Kangdar, Jianghuai Power, and so on, are already doing or planning to involve Internet financial business.

New Hope Finance may be the first to get involved and take the biggest action. As early as 2007, in order to solve the problem of farmers' financing, New Hope set up China's first breeding guarantee company in Shandong Province to provide guarantees for farmers who buy the company's feed products.

In 2013, New Hope launched the technical service "Foda Project" to find potential customers and then connect the financial needs of farmers in their own bodies. New Hope Finance is also similar to the P2P model. In March this year, the "Hope Finance" platform was launched. According to the Qilu Securities Research report, the transaction volume of "Hope Finance" is expected to reach 500 million to 1 billion yuan this year.

Internet finance is a blue sea. Chen Xingyi, chairman of New Hope Huinong (Technology) Information Co., Ltd., believes that there is expected to be 2 trillion yuan in the rural financial market.

Yang Zhangbing, deputy general manager of Shanghai Nongyi Information Technology Co., Ltd., said, "I'm afraid it's more than 2 trillion yuan." He cited his company as an example to a reporter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange News: "at present, the company is carrying out rural microcredit services with local financial guarantee companies, and the amount of loans in one county exceeds 1.1 billion yuan in just seven or eight months, and there are more than 2000 counties in the country." you can imagine the demand in this market! "

"policy red envelopes" are distributed frequently.

In addition to the independent efforts of enterprises, rural e-commerce will also enjoy the policy "sunshine".

A reporter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange News exclusively learned that the first draft of the "guidance on speeding up the Development of Rural Electronic Commerce" led by the Ministry of Commerce, with the participation of more than 20 ministries, including the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Agriculture, has been completed, and the final document will be issued in the form of a document issued by the State Office.

This is the first document to comprehensively deploy the development of rural e-commerce, focusing on four aspects: the information transformation of traditional rural circulation networks, the development of e-commerce for agricultural products, support for agricultural machinery production and circulation enterprises to develop e-commerce, and the expansion of rural e-commerce services.

It is worth noting that agricultural materials services will be the focus of rural e-commerce policies in the future. Kong Lingyu, deputy director of the Market system Construction Department of the Ministry of Commerce, stressed in an interview with the Shanghai Securities News: "in the next step in developing rural e-commerce, we should support agricultural materials, agricultural machinery production and circulation enterprises to develop e-commerce. We will develop agricultural capital stores in thousands of villages and townships into agricultural materials e-commerce service stores around farmers. Combine agricultural materials sales with guiding production."

Since the beginning of this year, wave after wave of policy "red packets" have been received by rural e-commerce. In just two months since March, the State Council and relevant ministries and commissions have issued three blockbuster documents one after another.

On March 12, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Agriculture, the all-China Federation of supply and Marketing Cooperation, and the State Post Bureau jointly issued some opinions on jointly promoting the healthy Development of Rural Logistics and speeding up the Service of Agricultural Modernization. It is suggested that postal and express enterprises should extend their business to rural areas and open up a two-way shortcut for rural logistics to "go to the countryside and go to cities". At the same time, support e-commerce, logistics, commerce, finance and other enterprises to participate in the construction of agriculture-related e-commerce platform, and guide rural logistics operators to rely on third-party e-commerce service platforms to carry out business.

On May 7, the State Council issued opinions on vigorously developing e-commerce and speeding up the cultivation of new driving forces for the economy, emphasizing the active development of rural e-commerce and encouraging agricultural means of production enterprises to develop e-commerce.

On May 15th, the Ministry of Commerce issued the Internet + Circulation Action Plan. In the special action plan of "Internet +" put forward by the ministries and commissions to implement the government work report, promoting e-commerce into rural areas is a major focus.

At the national rural e-commerce on-the-spot meeting held the day before, Wu Xiangyun, director of the Commerce and Trade Department of the Economic and Construction Department of the Ministry of Finance, also revealed that this year, the central government will allocate 2 billion yuan of special funds for rural e-commerce infrastructure construction.

In addition, a reporter from the Shanghai Securities News also learned from the Ministry of Agriculture that the development of agricultural e-commerce was listed as one of the 20 key tasks of the Ministry of Agriculture this year, emphasizing the need to make full use of the information platform for entering villages and households, and to carry out pilot projects for the direct distribution of products to urban communities and agricultural means of production to the countryside.

Under the linkage between government and enterprises, "Internet + Agriculture" is starting from rural e-commerce and rural finance, and is advancing step by step. The story of Internet agriculture in China begins.