Information consumption drives the new fulcrum of rural market

The latest figures from the Ministry of Commerce show that rural online retail sales exceeded 310 billion yuan in the first half of this year. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods exceeded 200 billion yuan, and the retail sales of network services for non-physical goods exceeded 110 billion yuan. Since the beginning of this year, online retail sales in rural areas have continued to grow rapidly, which is significantly faster than that in cities. Various signs show that information consumption has become a new engine to promote the upgrading of overall consumption in rural areas.

Information platform becomes a new engine of consumption

Recently, in the classroom of Yatuan Village Primary School in Zhanyi County, Yunnan Province, more than 60 rural children are watching a live video broadcast to watch a teacher as far away as the Beijing Nature Museum explain how China discovered its first dinosaur fossil. Lu Hanli, head of Taobao small classes, said: "Taobao Education is the largest comprehensive online education platform in China, with more than 10,000 high-quality educational institutions and massive online courses." Through technological progress, the platform has realized that the curriculum can reach rural children easily and quickly. As long as they want, children can watch the courses through video equipment located in rural Taobao points and interact with teachers in real time. "

From a national point of view, the breadth and depth of rural information consumption is constantly expanding. The Ministry of Agriculture 12316 "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" comprehensive information service platform has covered more than 1/3 of farmers across the country, providing farmers with a large number of market, science and technology and other information services. Various localities launched the pilot project of entering villages and households. 7940 beneficial agricultural information cooperatives were built and operated in 116 counties in 26 provinces, covering 1.35 percent of the total number of administrative villages in the country. Convenient services and e-commerce began to enter villages and households. Alibaba, an e-commerce company, has set up 16000 rural Taobao sites, covering 300 counties in 29 provinces, ranging from daily online purchasing agents to life services such as travel, medical care and education.

"Information consumption is divided into information product consumption, application service purchase consumption and resident re-consumption through the information technology platform. Among them, the consumption of information products is the hardware foundation of the whole consumption activity, while broadband, smart phone, wireless network, intelligent TV and so on are the foundation. " Lu Qingzhe, senior statistician at the Institute of Statistical Science of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that at present, the highlights of the growth of rural information consumption are mainly in two aspects: one is the high growth in the consumption of smartphones, smart home appliances, and products related to information hardware; the other is the high growth in the consumption of information content and information carriers such as mobile games and mobile literature.

Nowadays, many national rural information platforms are making rapid progress. Wang Xiaobing, deputy director of the Marketing Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that the national communications "village-to-village access" project has been further promoted, and rural comprehensive information service platforms such as "rural ICT" and "information fields" in various places have been further improved. In many places, three-level information service systems covering counties, townships and villages have been initially established, and rural information consumption and service capacity have reached a new level. With the help of the Internet information platform, various rural areas have established and improved public welfare services such as agricultural technology support, policy acquisition, agrometeorology, medical registration, water and electricity payment, and withdrawals, as well as e-commerce services such as the purchase of consumer goods, means of production and the sale of agricultural products.

Scale operation accelerates productive consumption

According to statistics, at present, there are more than 1.53 million farmers' cooperatives in the country, and the actual joining farmers account for about 42 percent of the total number of farmers. More than 1/3 of the contracted land has been transferred, with an additional circulation area of more than 40 million mu every year. There are about 877000 family farms in China, with an average operating scale of 200.2 mu. Compared with scattered traditional farmers, these new operators are more eager for cost-effective agricultural products, omni-directional planting programs and professional technical services. This undoubtedly gestates the soil for the rise of productive information consumption in rural areas. Among them, agricultural e-commerce consumption and agricultural Internet of things consumption are two hot spots.

The popularity of agricultural e-commerce is precisely because it caters to the trend of information consumption in rural areas. Tang Weiguo, head of the No. 1 operation center of agricultural merchants in Yuanjiang County, Yunnan Province, tasted the benefits of the new subject information consumption. Local cash crops are mainly mangoes and bananas, with a large number of growers and a strong demand for agricultural materials. In a month's time, the sales of agricultural products in the No. 1 operation center of Agricultural Merchants in charge of Tang Weiguo exceeded 200 tons. At the same time, in view of the problems raised by farmers in the sale of mangoes and bananas, Tang Weiguo helped farmers publish agricultural product information on the website of Agricultural Merchants No. 1 and successfully completed the docking with buyers.

"Multi-level distribution of agricultural materials is the product of the era of small-scale agriculture. after the development of moderate-scale operation, large growers seldom buy agricultural materials directly from retail stores." Liu Chunxiong, an associate professor at the School of Management of Zhengzhou University, has long focused on agricultural consumption. he found that large growers in major grain producing areas and cash crop areas have begun to bypass retailers at all levels and directly connect with manufacturers through the Internet. Through agricultural e-commerce, they buy seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and other means of production online, and get value-added information-based agricultural technology services.

The consumption of the Internet of things in agriculture is also expected. Zhejiang Lilan Edible Mushroom Farmers' Cooperative has 102members, 42000 square meters of mushroom room and 5500 square meters of cold storage. The cooperative spent 100000 yuan on the environmental monitoring system for the cultivation of edible fungi in Topu Yunnong, and used the Internet of things to monitor and automatically control the mushroom house. The management of a shed has been reduced from five to three. "Edible fungus cultivation requires high temperature, humidity and light conditions of the environment. In the past, relying on artificial experience to adjust temperature and light is sometimes easy to cause indoor environmental deviation." Zhu Youjun, director of the cooperative, said that it now relies on sensors to enable environmental parameters such as air temperature and humidity, illuminance and carbon dioxide to be displayed in real time and can be remotely controlled by mobile phones or computers. This ensures the rapid growth of fungi, reduces losses, and increases the output of cooperative mushrooms by more than 10%.

Li Daoliang, a professor at the School of Information and Electrical Engineering at China Agricultural University, said that productive information consumption in rural areas is a process of continuous transformation of agricultural production through the re-consumption of customer data. Whether farmers consume agricultural materials online or apply the Internet of things to agriculture in production, they all need to use the concept of "Internet +" to synchronously implement changes including the mode of production, the concept of supervision, marketing and other changes. In this process, the innovative achievements of the Internet will be deeply integrated with agricultural production, operation, management and services.

Rural logistics activates living consumption

"it's much more convenient now. You can buy what you like when you sit at home." When she saw Yang Xiao, a villager from Luxia Village, Yongfeng County, Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province, she was collecting Velcro online at the purchasing agency in the village. Since the establishment of this purchasing agency, trendy Yang Xiao has become a regular customer here, and most daily necessities are purchased through online orders and parcels in the village. In her words, there is a wide range of products online, there is more room to choose from, and the price is cheaper than that of brick-and-mortar stores. Now that the couriers are on their doorstep, there is no need to run around shopping.

"from furniture and household appliances to melon and fruit biscuits, there are an average of more than 10 parcels every day." The person in charge of the purchasing agency in Luxia Village, Yin Yulong, said. Three years ago, Yin Yulong, who was engaged in the maintenance of household appliances, was acutely aware of the market opportunities brought about by the change in farmers' consumption concepts and set up the online purchasing agency business. Most of the villagers did not have the habit of opening online silver, so he used his own online silver to pay. After the parcel arrives, the nearby villagers call to pick it up and deliver the goods to your door in time. Villagers can buy daily necessities here and mail some of their local products to their relatives and friends in other places. With meticulous service, Yinyulong's maintenance shop has become the busiest place in the village, and his purchasing agent business income has also exceeded the maintenance income of his old bank.

Yongfeng County is a comprehensive pilot county for e-commerce in rural areas in Jiangxi Province. In recent years, the county has set up special funds for the development of e-commerce industry to open up the channel of "online goods to the countryside", train e-commerce management talents by relying on platforms such as e-commerce incubator, and try its best to solve the "online shopping difficulties" of rural farmers. let more villagers enjoy the convenient life brought by e-commerce. At present, the county has developed 96 logistics enterprises, with more than 10 e-commerce platforms, more than 2500 employees and an annual transaction volume of more than 1 billion yuan, forming a 48-hour freight network with access to major cities.