China's new farmers are using e-commerce to transform agriculture

Tech-savvy young people are transforming the agricultural industry by using e-commerce to improve the safety and quality of local produce

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China's new farmers are using e-commerce to transform agriculture

Published: 4:19am, 15 Dec 2014

Du Qianli completed his postgraduate studies at Zhengzhou University in 2008. Unlike most of his classmates who became white-collar workers, Du returned home to a remote village in the Taihang Mountains, where he set up an online shop selling local produce.

"Villagers looked down on me, asking why a man with a master's degree had returned to the countryside," he said.

But today, Du's shop at Taobao.com, the mainland's leading e-commerce platform, earns him a profit of more than 100,000 yuan (HK$126,530) a month, as farmers embrace environmentally friendly ways of farming, which Du, a major purchaser of organic and prime produce, requires of them.

Du is just one of a flock of well-educated, technology-savvy young people who have moved to rural areas to become "new farmers" in recent years.

Unlike traditional farmers who work small plots without access to market information, the new farmers take advantage of the internet and envision agriculture with social responsibility, creativity and a better sense of the market, says a report on this emerging group by Alibaba's research arm AliResearch.com.

Such new farmers - estimated at about one million - make up the increasing number of people selling farm produce through online shops and have changed the way agricultural produce is being distributed, says AliResearch's Chen Liang . About 3.7 billion yuan worth of agricultural products were sold on Taobao in 2010; last year saw 40 billion yuan in sales.

"Traditional growers didn't have a say in pricing. But now e-commerce has allowed them to face consumers directly, greatly improving their negotiating power," Chen said.