When the Internet "pieced together" digital agriculture, the logic of e-commerce is changing.

Economic Observer Network/Wen China Internet Company is collectively competing for an ancient and brand-new track: agriculture. How important is this track? Chen Lei, CEO of Pinduoduo, said that the upward trend of agricultural products is the foundation and strategic core of Pinduoduo.

This statement is rare. In e-commerce rivers and lakes, Pinduoduo, the attacker who broke the "final era" of e-commerce, is usually regarded as a social e-commerce model and the release of the innovation potential of the market outside the Fifth Ring Road.

Chen Lei, CEO of Pinduoduo, as the only enterprise representative, said at the symposium on "Solving the Difficulties in Selling Agricultural Products" held by the CPPCC recently that "the level of agricultural digitalization is lagging behind, the quality of agricultural products is unstable, it is difficult to standardize, and the information between production and marketing is asymmetric." He said that Pinduoduo will devote itself to the digital transformation of traditional agriculture in the future.

Not only the upstart e-commerce company like Pinduoduo, but also the old players are beginning to realize the great value of this track: Ali quickly set up a digital agriculture department at the end of 20 19, and JD.COM announced in June 10 that it will exert its efforts in smart agriculture in the next three years, and previously established a digital agriculture research center with listed company Fubon.

In order to find users and open up the market, "painting the wall" in the countryside is the "downward" play of the previous generation of e-commerce to sell industrial products to the rural market; Today's rural e-commerce, Chen Lei pointed out that "agricultural products go up", to some extent, even means the imagination of future e-commerce.

At present, the competition of e-commerce is far from the competition of a single enterprise, but the competition of the whole supply chain and industrial chain. Under this circumstance, the leading e-commerce as the leading commodity circulation is transforming the supply chain. On this basis, the retail transformation that e-commerce needs to complete in the future is no longer the front end of the platform, but how to "go up" and activate the most upstream of the industrial chain.

However, unlike the standardized and industrialized agriculture in the United States, most agricultural production in China is scattered small-scale farming; In addition, the intricate distribution and circulation structure under the traditional line greatly increases the loss of agricultural products, and farmers are often forced to harvest agricultural products in advance or treat them with chemicals to extend the shelf life. In the whole agricultural cycle, "what to plant, how much to sell and how much to sell" are faced with great uncertainty. Limited by multiple factors, how to connect small farmers with the big market has always been the main challenge of increasing farmers' income and agricultural development in China.

These problems not only require the government to provide the necessary infrastructure, but also rely on business innovation to find solutions. As Chen Lei said, Pinduoduo has made some attempts. At present, Pinduoduo is already the largest upstream platform for agricultural products in China. Relying on organizations such as "Farmland Cloud Fight" and technological innovation system, it tried to transform the upstream supply chain of traditional agricultural products, and was recently awarded the "Organizational Innovation Award" by the Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development of the State Council.

However, what needs to be seen is that agriculture, as the basic industry of the national economy, has large investment, low return, long cycle and slow effect, and the ROE of the industry is maintained at around 3% all the year round, which will be a long and uncertain investment process.

In addition, in the face of the vast rural market outside the spotlight, the real challenge of e-commerce is not "sinking", but the strategies and styles that can be quickly replicated in cities in the past, and it is likely that they will all fail. How to reconstruct the new retail system, explore the new relationship between production and demand, and even redefine e-commerce is the real problem behind the fashionable concept of agricultural digital transformation.