Interest-Based E-commerce Boosts Farmers' Production and Income

E-commerce content creators from Ya'an, Sichuan, such as Ran Keqi, who carefully select large, thin-skinned soft-seed pomegranates from Huili, Sichuan, have gone live on site and sold 2000 orders within an hour; local creators like Wang Juchang from Panzhihua have endorsed the seasonal Kate mangoes, helping their fellow villagers to open up fruit sales channels. According to the "2024 Harvest Festival Douyin E-commerce Assistance to Agriculture Data Report," from September 2023 to September 2024, Douyin E-commerce cumulatively sold 7.1 billion orders of agricultural specialty products, a 61% increase in total orders compared to the previous year, with an average of 17.4 million packages of agricultural specialty products being sold to all parts of the country every day.

Zhang Zhaoxin, a researcher at the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, believes that industrial revitalization is the top priority in rural revitalization. Rural characteristic industries are an important part of rural industries and a significant channel for farmers to increase their income and wealth. In recent years, the consumption upgrade of urban and rural residents has increased the demand for ecological, high-quality, diverse, and personalized agricultural products, bringing new opportunities for the development of rural characteristic industries. The development of agricultural product e-commerce, especially the iterative upgrade of interest-based e-commerce over traditional e-commerce, has provided a new path for the precise matching between the supply and demand of specialty agricultural products. It has also brought new momentum for the aggregation of rural characteristic industry clusters, the formation of rural characteristic industry belts, and the promotion of regional economic growth and farmers' income increase.

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"Full-domain interest-based e-commerce can fully display the connotation and value of rural characteristic products, reflect the good ecology, characteristic folk customs, and long history, allowing the products from the ground to meet consumers directly and be sold, thereby turning local specialties into major products and driving the economic development of the region," said Zhang Zhaoxin.

Dang Guoying, a researcher at the Rural Development Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that the pain point of traditional agricultural development is that the market-oriented role is constrained by excessively high transaction costs, leading to insufficient effective supply and supply-demand mismatch. Demand information based on user interests is an important condition for farmers and entrepreneurs to enhance their business opportunity discovery capabilities. This mechanism can gradually increase the scale of farmers' operations, promote the下沉 of key links in the agricultural industry chain to townships, and is conducive to increasing farmers' sideline income, achieving urban-rural integrated development.

Dang Guoying gave an example: "For instance, the scattered mulberries across the country, if traditional bulk agricultural merchants get involved, the transaction costs are high, and it is not easy to open up the market. However, after the involvement of e-commerce platforms, the small bulk agricultural products across the country become regional bulk agricultural products, which can then scale up, deepen division of labor, and bring benefits."

Zhai Liming, the director of fresh food life industry operations at Douyin E-commerce, introduced that this year, under the promotion of a series of special assistance to agriculture projects, various seasonal fruits and vegetables have doubled their sales during the peak season. The platform's annual sales of agricultural specialty products increased by 170% year-on-year, and the total order volume of agricultural specialty products increased by 61% year-on-year. Many local specialties have crossed mountains and rivers and reached consumers through a screen.

Li Wenjuan, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, once conducted public welfare publicity for Panzhihua mangoes, indirectly driving the sale of 400,000 jin of mangoes by Panzhihua fruit farmers. "Interest-based e-commerce platforms can provide more traffic support and resource inclination, allowing high-quality agricultural products to directly connect with consumers, enter thousands of households, achieve multiple wins, and let farmers increase both production and income," said Li Wenjuan.

Zhang Zhaoxin believes that interest-based e-commerce will become a widespread carrier for deeply exploring the multifaceted values of rural areas. With the demonstration and drive of interest-based e-commerce cases, more agriculturally involved entities will be mobilized to enter the era of universal live broadcasting, discovering and capturing the beautiful scenes, people, and things in rural areas from a broader and more diverse perspective, making interest-based e-commerce a main platform for showcasing rural production, life, and ecological scenes, and allowing urban and rural consumers to have a deeper understanding of rural areas.

Interest-based e-commerce will become the main driving force for the innovation of rural characteristic industry formats. As interest-based e-commerce transforms from a content platform to a full-domain e-commerce platform that includes content, shopping malls, and search, it will provide a more diversified choice for various entities to participate in the development of rural characteristic industries. This will give rise to various new formats and models, further stimulating the vitality of the development of rural characteristic industries.

Interest-based e-commerce will become the most effective way for farmers to share the dividends of industrial development. Interest-based e-commerce directly connects enthusiasts of rural characteristic products with producers of rural characteristic products. As producers, a large number of small and medium-scale farmers can directly participate in the pricing process, obtain product dividends, and change the situation where producers are in a passive position in the traditional agricultural product industry chain and find it difficult to obtain backend value-added benefits.It is understood that interest-based e-commerce has actively collaborated with local governments and industries, systematically and massively supporting small and medium-sized merchants in industrial belts, enhancing the popularity of local products, and aiding regional and real economy transformation and upgrading. Taking Douyin e-commerce as an example, since 2023, Douyin e-commerce has successively established deep cooperation relationships with Fujian, Yunnan, Shandong, and other places for the high-quality development of industrial belt e-commerce. So far, the platform has covered 684 distinctive industrial belts across the country. The number of industrial belt merchants has increased by more than 194%, and the sales of industrial belt products have grown by more than 66%.