2020, Volume 23, Paper 12

ISSN: 2209-6612

E-Commerce in Chinese Vegetable Markets

Chen Li – Postgraduate student, Centre for Global Food and Resources, University of Adelaide, Adelaide

Abstract

China is both a major vegetable producer and consumer. Vegetables have many features such as regionality, seasonality, consumer ubiquity, and timeliness of sales. Vegetable prices in China fluctuate drastically, and there are many actors in the value chain, resulting in high consumer prices. In recent years, overproduction of many products has frequently occurred, resulting in the failure of many products to sell and products left to rot in the production place. The social problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, called the ‘three rural problems’, have become increasingly prominent. Enhancing the market competitiveness of agricultural production, and more effectively utilising agricultural resources, is the best way to develop agriculture. This paper suggests that one way of solving the problems of Chinese vegetable value chains is by expanding the use of e-commerce. E-commerce could greatly benefit farmers by reducing transaction costs and providing timely supply and demand information and feedback from consumers. This will help to reduce the negative effects of the three rural problems. To a certain extent, the e-commerce platform could solve the fluctuation of vegetable price because this mode is not affected by region and season. With vegetables moving faster and cumbersome spot trading procedures avoided, consumers could purchase vegetables from all over China over the Internet at any time. Therefore, in this paper, the current condition of Chinese vegetable e-commerce and the reasons that restrict its development are analysed, and measures for vegetable e-commerce development are proposed.

Key words: vegetable, e-commence, value chain, consumers, logistics

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