Why the "Cloud Farm" is Lenovo's fancy

March 19 afternoon, Lenovo Holdings strategic investment Cloud Farm signing ceremony held in Jiaxiang County, Shandong Province, about the specific amount of investment and share of the situation, Lenovo Holdings senior vice president Chen with "tens of millions of dollars" and "the specific number is inconvenient to disclose" around.

According to public information, "Cloud Farm" was formally established in February 2014, is by the day Chen Yun Farm Co., Ltd. created an online agricultural trading platform, mainly for farmers to provide fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, agricultural machinery trading and measuring soil fertilizer, agricultural technology services, such as providing a variety of value-added services, including self-employed and merchants accounted for roughly half of the proportion. Up to now, the cloud farm has more than 200 county-level service centers, more than 16,000 village-level sites, the market covers Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan and other more than 10 provinces.

After the close of the "two sessions", the Ministry of Commerce spokesman Danyang said in a press question, "the Ministry of Commerce is working with relevant departments to develop guidelines on speeding up the development of rural E-commerce." "And the current national agriculture-related sites, has more than 3,000."

"Agricultural Electric Dealer" is not equal to "rural electricity dealer"

The development of rural electricity business has become a general trend. From the angle of industry, it is necessary to distinguish between "agricultural electric power Quotient" and "rural power supplier". Tiger Sniff that the two can not be equated, the rural electric business is a geographical carrier to form a two-way market, the rural area is not only the use of electricity to carry out the product output of the seller's market, but also the use of electric platform for online consumption of the buyer's markets, and "agricultural power" to the former

Lenovo Holdings has been in the layout of agriculture since 2010, and currently owns the Jia Wo Group, Fung Lian Group, Wing Lung loan, cloud farms.

Why does Lenovo choose to invest in cloud farms, a field-farm electric Company? Through the cloud farms, can we see what opportunities and challenges are hidden behind the agricultural electricity dealers? To answer these questions, we must look at the overall industrial chain of agricultural electric dealers, so that the tiger sniff produced the agricultural electric industry chain structure map.

Agricultural electrical Business Industry map. png

Traditional agricultural industry chain, from the transaction level, the upstream concentration in the agricultural trade links, midstream concentrated in the agricultural products processing links, downstream focus on agricultural trade links, logistics, finance runs through the entire industrial chain. and the current industrial chain downstream of the electricity quotient, internet penetration is the highest.

This link end consumer is the main service object, electric business to Ali, Jingdong electric business platform, Shun Fung optimization, original life, such as vertical fresh electricity business as the leading, community O2O to carry out test water. Among them, Alibaba to "Amoy Bao", "Suichang mode" and "Chinese characteristics pavilion" combination to build the biggest momentum of rural electricity dealers.

The c2b/of the middle reaches is not common in the agricultural electricity quotient, the tiger smells that this is a kind of agricultural electricity merchant "reverse urbanization" phenomenon. Earlier, Tuo Tuo the CEO of Dufei and Tiger Sniff Exchange mentioned, they plan to line a farm produce project, consumer based on lbs gathered together to adopt an animal or designated to plant a certain crop, tuo tuo workers can regularly feed the growth of crops through video feedback to consumers, Consumers can also go to the farm for management and maintenance on weekends. Compared with the mode of agricultural batch production, this model is inefficient and difficult to scale, and aims at making consumers have a sense of participation and entertainment.

Cloud Farm--"Pimp" mode

Cloud farms attached to the upstream agricultural trade links, the service target is agricultural producers. Similar enterprises have a network of agricultural, 91 agricultural net, agricultural sales network. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2014, China's agricultural and food market size was 9.3 trillion yuan, the agricultural market scale of more than 2.2 trillion.

Agricultural materials as a survival factor, compared with agricultural products, standardization is higher, and seasonal, regional factors lead to agricultural demand cycle more obvious. On the other hand, by the farmers ' cultural level and production site restrictions, led by the cloud Farm model as the representative of the electric operators on the offline service station is very large.

Yesterday, Tiger Sniff in the village of Jiaxiang County two cloud Farm Service site was inspected, found that although Cloud Farm is online business platform, but the transaction mainly through the offline service station completed. The trading scene: When farmers need to buy agricultural materials, to the nearest cloud farm Service site for consultation, site service personnel in accordance with the needs of farmers to introduce relevant agricultural materials, farmers fancy the appropriate agricultural, site service personnel to help farmers to the next single, site collection fees through the net silver will be paid to agricultural goods merchants, merchants for delivery. Individual growers, familiar with computer operations will be on the site of their own orders. (Tiger Sniff: The trading scene is similar to that of tobacco dealers)

Cloud farmers to do two things, one is agricultural investment (suppliers), through the line and door-to-door visits to attract agricultural enterprises settled in, cloud farm workers told Tiger Sniff, this link to the agricultural business "internet thinking" brainwashing, agricultural enterprises bullish on the trend of the electric business, but concerns with the line under the traditional channel business relationship broke down. Second, the cultivation of service sites, the original wholesale farmers through the way to join the cloud farm, usually the next site's service radius of 2.5 km. Cloud Farms to service site staff training, agricultural merchants back to "purchasing fees" (also known as "service charges", according to the agricultural category of gross margin), the development of Cloud farm registered members are the main means of profit.

It is not difficult to find that cloud farms in the entire agricultural trade links, just the agricultural supplies and Service site hub, direct docking of the situation of farmers less. Therefore, the cloud farm business model is like "pimping" mode.

Advantages: Shorten the traditional agricultural trade in the middle, the price advantage brought by sales growth, service site revenue increase, word-of-mouth dissemination, low user access costs.

For example, Jiaxiang County Wan Zhang Zhen Cloud Farm service station, the head of Zhang to the Tiger Sniff, he joined Cloud Farm last June, a year to sell 700 tons of fertilizer. Liang Po Temple Farm Service Director Caoliude introduced, he began operating service stations last April, when the sale of 800 tons of fertilizer, is expected to sell 1500 tons this year. Price, to 40 kg Woft as an example, other channels to sell 150 yuan/bag, Cloud Farm 110 yuan.

Disadvantages: The user education cost is high, the payment link is cumbersome, the small order delivery efficiency is low, the service quality is uneven.

Compared to the vertical fresh electricity dealers downstream of agricultural electric power suppliers, the upstream agricultural trade of the buyers of the cost of the customer is low, strong user stickiness. Service station collection, transfer in the order set is prone to errors in operation. It is understood that agricultural materials in addition to the low demand for seed distribution, fertilizers, pesticides have distribution requirements. If the fertilizer orders in more than 5 tons, delivery time will be fast, the cost is low. Service stations are mostly local farmers, with a high age, low cultural level, lack of ability to deal with problems outside the transaction process.

In addition, cloud farms have common challenges with other agricultural power suppliers.

The challenge of agricultural electricity dealers

The driving force for all industry development comes from people, and agriculture comes from farmers. China's population aging trend is obvious, the same peasant aging inevitable, the overall increase of farmers ' cultural level will form the next wave of "new with old" trend. Whether the "traditional peasant" can quickly over to the "new farmers", indirectly affect the process of agricultural electricity dealers.

In addition to human factors, the challenge of agricultural electricity dealers is mainly manifested in the industrial form and infrastructure, reflected in:

1 The upstream and downstream of the industrial chain are highly dispersed;
2) scale and low standardization degree;
3 asymmetric information;
4 Low level of technology application;
5 Backward logistics level;
6 inadequate financial resources;
7 brand awareness is weak.

Internet technology and modern biotechnology transform traditional agriculture, cross-domain into the agricultural phenomenon will become common, "Internet + Agriculture" new ecological to be established, the traditional agriculture to understand deep and familiar with the Internet play entrepreneurs, in the agricultural electric business start-up opportunities.