----Research in Yudu County of Jiangxi Province

By Zhou Qunli & Cheng Yu, Research Department of Rural Economy, the DRC

Research Report No 174, 2015 (Total 4859)

Abstract:

Rural e-commerce has witnessed a swift development in recent years, offering a new driving force to facilitate agricultural transformation and upgrading and to help farmers to increase income and lead a well-off life. Research findings show that rural e-commerce could proactively expand sales channels and enhance logistics, which have promoted distribution and eased the "sales difficulty" of agro-products. The e-commerce platform could enable farmers to make business startups, promote agricultural upgrading, and enhance integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas. However, rural e-commerce business now faces such problems as low-level standardized agro-product production and weak brand building, immature new-type supply-chain organizers, low logistics accessibility with high delivery costs, and lack of motivation for rural households to get involved. The effects for rural e-commerce to facilitate agricultural quality and efficiency enhancement and farmers' income increase are not fully brought out. It is suggested that stronger policy support be given to make agro-product production and trade more standardized, improve the service system, enhance resource integration, and make agricultural producers become more active to participate in e-commerce operation.