Digital agriculture makes villages wealthy

Many rural areas in Southwest China's Guizhou province have been focusing on the digitalization of procurement, production, sales and other procedures. The new business model increases the standard of living for villagers and boosts rural vitalization.

Xifeng county in Guiyang – capital of the province – has been taking advantage of the opportunities brought about by digital economy since August 2015, and the bourgeoning e-commerce has put locals on the path of prosperity.

Zou Jianyu, a resident of Libei village in Xifeng, now has four online shops which receive 200 to 300 orders daily and register 2 million yuan ($298,400) in annual sales revenue. Zou is confident about her business prospects. "The government has established a logistic sorting center which has reduced delivery costs and helped us send our agricultural products across the country," said Zou.

Since 2017, the Xifeng government has organized a number of e-commerce training sessions and set up full-fledged e-commerce industrial chains for platform operations and logistics to boost agricultural product sales.

"We have also built a production-sale sensing system which allows us to learn about the county's current industrial layout and offers us targeted guidance on production based on the market information change," said an official from the county government.

There are about 70 registered e-commerce operators and 500 online shops in Libei village, which generate more than 42 million yuan.

According to incomplete statistics, Guizhou province has established 79 county-level e-commerce operation centers and 4,306 village-level e-commerce service stations, and the express delivery service has been made available in every village in the province.