What on earth is the boss farming for?

A few decades ago, Chairman Mao said: "the countryside is a vast world, and great achievements can be made there!" As a result, the broad masses of young people embarked on the journey to the mountains and countryside with their ideals; decades later, with the guidance of policies, the continuous development of China's agricultural industrialization and the needs of enterprise transformation and diversification, some entrepreneurs spontaneously "farming". Words such as cross-border cooperation, capital integration, technical support and so on frequently appear in various announcements and news.

In just over a month, another wave of enterprises are scrambling to enter agriculture: on August 26th, Evergrande announced its high-profile move into modern agriculture and animal husbandry; on August 25th, Letv announced to promote the ecological agriculture strategy and launch the e-commerce platform "Le Life". Focusing on fresh products, and said it would build its own logistics system; on August 20, Zoomlion spent 2.1 billion yuan on the acquisition of Chery heavy Industry and entered the agricultural machinery industry. On August 4, Jianghuai Power announced that the company plans to buy Shanghai Nongyi Information Technology Co., Ltd. for 114 million yuan, which will cut the company's business into the application field of agricultural informatization and the Internet of things. Tianze Information, together with Tuojia Fengsheng, plans to cooperate in products and services such as precision agriculture.

Deloitte China pointed out in its latest report on China's agricultural development trends on August 28th that PE/VC M & An investment in China's agricultural sector reached its peak in recent years in 2010. Since then, the acceleration of the agricultural industry has been magnified and subdivided, the direction of enterprises has become increasingly accurate, and the "blue ocean" of the agricultural industry has also become increasingly "red".

In the Internet age, there is such a creed: "as long as you stand in the tuyere, pigs can fly into the sky." Pigs fly wherever the wind blows. For enterprises marching into agriculture, the "wind" of policy is the reason why "pigs" choose to stand in the tuyere and the key to flying into the sky.

Since 2004, the Central Committee has continuously issued the No. 1 document focusing on agriculture, rural areas and farmers for 11 years, which seems to have sounded a strong assembly call to entrepreneurs. In particular, document No. 1 of 2008, 2012 and 2013 focuses on agricultural infrastructure, agricultural scientific and technological innovation and modern agriculture, respectively.

A person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told the reporter that from an industrial point of view, for cross-border enterprises and capital, the policy dividend is mainly reflected in two aspects: first, cross-border entry into agriculture can enable enterprises to carry out diversified development. for manufacturing enterprises can effectively carry out the development of the whole industry chain, from the promotion of the whole value chain to find a starting point. Second, with the help of policies, in today's increasingly tight industrial land, enterprises or capital can effectively occupy land resources and related resources.

However, whether such cross-border entry into agriculture is really beneficial to farmers and agricultural development? Analysts at the Ministry of Agriculture say it is still open to question. Cross-border entry of enterprises and capital into agriculture can bring capital, technology and advanced management concepts; however, entrepreneurs and capital tend to be profitable. Whether cross-border entry into agriculture will compete with farmers for profits, whether it will have an impact on the original agricultural structure, and whether it is really conducive to the development of agriculture, these issues still need to be further studied.

Wang Ruibo, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has said that there are three main factors restricting investment in agriculture: first, agricultural enterprises are mostly distributed in remote areas, which are not attractive to talents, and the quality of practitioners needs to be improved; second, agriculture is an industry with heavy assets, whether it is planting or aquaculture, there is a great demand for funds, land and personnel. Third, agricultural enterprises often have little brand awareness, and products without brands can only be dragged down to death by cost.

Is it really the right time to enter agriculture? For such a cyclical industry, cross-border farming requires courage and perseverance, and the pursuit of short-term returns is obviously difficult to achieve. Moving and following the trend of cross-border entry into agriculture will hurt agricultural development and enterprises themselves; on the contrary, this time "going to the mountains and going to the countryside" is more like the best time for entrepreneurs to express their rationality and show their maturity.