The Construction of a Socialized Service Platform and System for “Internet + Agriculture” in China

Abstract

The mismatch between supply and demand and inefficient supply in China’s agricultural product market is quite severe, making agricultural supply-side structural reform an important topic and task for rural economic work in China. The successful implementation of agricultural supply-side reform requires a comprehensive agricultural social service platform and system to support it. However, the current agricultural social service platform system in China faces issues such as a lack of coordination among service entities and poor information communication, making it difficult to meet the demands of supply-side reform. To address this issue, under the new circumstances of supply-side reform, this paper proposes the idea of reorganizing the agricultural social service platform and system through industrial chain collaboration theory, and applying “internet +” for technological reengineering of the agricultural social service platform system. Based on this, a new agricultural social service platform system architecture is constructed, which includes service entities, service platforms, service content, and operational models. The research findings provide guidance for agricultural product producers, distributors, sellers, and related service entities along the agricultural industry chain on how to use “internet +” for collaborative decision-making. This approach is beneficial for addressing the supply-demand imbalance and low resource allocation efficiency in China’s agricultural product market, thereby advancing the structural reform of China’s agricultural supply side.

1. Introduction

Currently, in terms of quantity, China’s agricultural product supply has basically met the requirements of “basic self-sufficiency in grain and absolute security in staple food”. Major grain-producing areas like Henan and Northeast China have even faced issues such as difficulty in selling grain. However, in terms of quality, the diversity of Chinese agricultural products still fails to meet social demand in real time, leading to phenomena such as “garlic price spikes” and “ginger price surges”. Consequently, government documents have proposed advancing agricultural supply-side structural reform to align the supply quantity, variety, and quality of agricultural products with the overall societal and consumer demand [1].

The focus of agricultural supply-side reform is to address issues such as “reducing excess stock, lowering costs, and filling gaps”. These challenges are difficult for farmers to solve on their own. Collaborative decision-making along the agricultural industry chain is necessary, involving pre-production, production, and post-production stages through various agricultural socialized services such as agricultural planning, supply of agricultural inputs, technical extension, information services, financial services, and logistics. Therefore, government documents also propose implementing agricultural socialized service support projects to accelerate the development of agricultural productive services [2,3,4].

From the current state of development of agricultural socialized services in China, the service system has long exhibited characteristics of segmentation and fragmentation. Issues such as isolated service providers and poor communication often result in mismatched supply and demand, making it difficult to provide effective support for China’s agricultural supply-side reform. The theme of this study has significant practical implications. Agricultural social service platforms play an irreplaceable role in ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products, promoting sustainable agricultural development, and increasing farmers’ incomes. With the deepening of agricultural supply-side reform, optimizing and improving the social service system is crucial for achieving the goals of agricultural modernization. This paper first reviews the historical evolution of agricultural social service platforms in China, then analyzes the limitations faced by the current service system in the context of supply-side reform, and finally proposes a design framework for the “Internet + Agriculture” social service platform [5]. There is still very limited theoretical research on constructing a new type of agricultural socialized service system that meets the needs of China’s agricultural supply-side reform under the macro background of supply-side reform. This paper addresses this issue by proposing that the current agricultural socialized service system must undergo a transformation, achieving two reconstructions: technological reconstruction through the integration of “internet +” and organizational reconstruction for collaborative decision-making among industry chain stakeholders. On this basis, a new “Internet + Agriculture” socialized service system is constructed to support the realization of China’s agricultural supply-side reform goals [6,7].

2. The Historical Evolution of China’s Agricultural Socialized Service Platform and System

The evolution of China’s agricultural socialized service platform and system can be broadly divided into three stages: the initial development stage (1978–1989), the gradual improvement stage (1990–2007), and the new socialized service stage from 2008 to the present. After 1978, China widely implemented the household contract responsibility system, making individual farmers the basic units of agricultural production. This led to an increasing demand for agricultural socialized services among farmers. In this context, the 1983 Central Document No. 1, “Several Issues Concerning the Current Rural Economic Development Policy”, first introduced the concept of “socialized services”, proposing to “carry out agricultural technological transformation, establish and improve the agricultural scientific and technological research and extension system, and develop an education system for cultivating rural construction talents”. Following this, the 1984 Central Document No. 1 more clearly proposed the gradual establishment of a relatively complete commodity production service system to meet farmers’ needs for technology, capital, supply and marketing, storage, processing, transportation, market information, and business guidance. The 1985 Central Document No. 1 suggested encouraging the transfer of technology and the flow of talent by stating that “scientific research and extension units, colleges and universities, and urban enterprises can accept research projects commissioned by rural areas, transfer scientific research achievements, provide technical consulting services, or form scientific research and production consortia with commodity bases and other rural production units”. The 1986 Central Document No. 1 emphasized that in the process of socializing production services, attention should be paid to “different contents, different forms, different scales, and different degrees of cooperation and union simultaneously coexisting”. Overall, the 1980s marked the initial development stage of agricultural socialized services in China. Although the concept of agricultural socialized services had been proposed, its specific connotation and system content were not yet clear. Strategies were mainly suggested based on the key demands of agricultural production, but a systematic framework for agricultural socialized services had not yet been formed [8,9,10].

In December 1990, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council first proposed the concept of the “agricultural socialized service system” in the “Notice on the Work of Agriculture and Rural Areas in 1991”. They identified the main service entities as “cooperative economic organizations, state economic and technical departments, and other various service-oriented economic entities” and called for the establishment and improvement of the agricultural socialized service system. In October 1992, the State Council issued a specific notice, “On Strengthening the Construction of the Agricultural Socialized Service System”, which clarified the direction and principles for constructing the agricultural socialized service system, funding assurance mechanisms, and support policies. This marked the first time China established the basic framework for the agricultural socialized service system. From 1992 to 1999, China accelerated the construction of the agricultural technology extension system through a series of policies and regulations, such as the “Agricultural Technology Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China” in 1993 and the State Council General Office’s 1999 notice, “Opinions on Stabilizing the Grassroots Agricultural Technology Extension System” from the Ministry of Agriculture and other departments. During 2004–2007, the Central Document No. 1 repeatedly made explicit deployments for deepening the reform of the agricultural technology extension system, proposing a combination of public welfare services and operational services to form a widely participatory agricultural socialized service system. Starting in 1990, with the establishment of the framework for the agricultural socialized service system, its continuous improvement, especially the implementation of agricultural technology extension system reforms, greatly promoted the development and productivity of Chinese agriculture [11].

With the convening of the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee in 2008, the meeting systematically reviewed and summarized the glorious journey and valuable experience of China’s rural reform, studied several major issues in advancing rural reform and development under new circumstances, and decided to establish a new type of agricultural socialized service system. It proposed accelerating the construction of a new agricultural socialized service system relying on public service institutions, based on cooperative economic organizations, led by key enterprises, supplemented by other social forces, combining public welfare services with operational services, and coordinating specialized services with comprehensive services. Thus, the construction of China’s agricultural socialized service system entered a new chapter. From 2009 to 2012, the Central Document No. 1 successively deployed innovative rural financial products and services, the development of farmer professional cooperatives, and agricultural technology innovation. The 2013 Central Document No. 1 proposed adhering to the directions of diversified subjects, specialized services, and market-oriented operations, fully leveraging the role of public service institutions, and accelerating the construction of a new type of agricultural socialized service system that combines public welfare services with operational services and coordinates specialized services with comprehensive services. This document surpassed the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee’s proposal of relying on public service entities and called for vigorously cultivating diversified service entities and playing the pioneering role of operational service organizations. The 2014 and 2015 Central Document No. 1s proposed supporting the development of farmer cooperatives, family farms, professional large households, leading enterprises, and other new agricultural management entities, promoting cooperative, order-based, and entrusted service models, and encouraging and guiding social forces to participate in public welfare services through service procurement.

The 2018 Central Document No. 1 proposed cultivating various specialized and market-oriented service organizations, advancing the full-process socialized services of agricultural production, and helping small farmers reduce costs and increase efficiency. The 2024 Central Document No. 1 emphasized focusing on small farmers as the foundation, new agricultural management entities as the key, and socialized services as the support, accelerating the cultivation of a high-quality production and management workforce suitable for modern agricultural development.

3. Limitations of the Current Agricultural Socialized Service Platform and System in the Face of Supply-Side Reform

Analyzing the policy changes regarding agricultural socialized services in central government documents over the more than 40 years of reform and opening-up, it is evident that China’s agricultural socialized services have undergone a process of expanding service content, improving service systems, and innovating service mechanisms. With the development of China’s agricultural socialized service platform and system, the long-standing issue of insufficient total agricultural product supply has been resolved, and the production of some agricultural products has even resulted in temporary oversupply. Consequently, structural contradictions have become the main issues [12]. Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China has proposed advancing agricultural supply-side structural reform, a major strategic decision aimed at addressing long-standing structural and systemic contradictions in agriculture by adjusting agricultural production factors, upgrading consumption structures, and responding to changes in the international agricultural product market. Relevant surveys indicate that the demand for various agricultural services is significantly positively correlated with organizational collaboration, with correlation coefficients of 0.59 and 0.68, respectively. Cooperatives not only assist farmers in acquiring new technologies but also promote e-commerce development, thereby enhancing service demand. Additionally, contract farming has increased the demand for technology and logistics, ensuring the quality of agricultural products. The technological promotion and industrial chain upgrades by leading enterprises further strengthen the linkage between cooperatives and farmers. Therefore, “internet +” has injected new momentum into the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture [13].Although China has entered a new phase of agricultural socialized service construction since 2008, a review of policy documents and theoretical research on agricultural socialized services reveals that the question of how to adapt to supply-side reform remains unanswered. The current agricultural socialized service system still has the following limitations:

Agricultural supply-side structural reform requires decisions from a holistic perspective, considering the entire agricultural industry chain. Although new policy documents on agricultural socialized services advocate for diversified entities and specialized services, they do not address how to coordinate among these diverse entities and various specialized services. Service entities often operate independently, aiming to maximize their own benefits, which makes it difficult to achieve optimal decisions for the entire industry chain. This fragmentation hampers the effective implementation of supply-side reform [14,15].

The current agricultural socialized service entities include government public service agencies and operational entities. In a market economy, government departments providing public services should not excessively interfere with the micro-operations of enterprises. Even agricultural technology departments directly related to agriculture are unlikely to specifically coordinate the service activities of each agricultural production entity with financial institutions, agricultural input companies, and logistics enterprises. Although pilot projects and practices of new agricultural socialized services have been carried out in regions like Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Jiangxi, establishing leading enterprises, some experts have noted that if these enterprises become too large, individual farmers are disadvantaged in negotiations, unable to fully benefit from the value-added processes within the agricultural industry chain. Furthermore, despite pilot projects to establish farmer cooperatives, issues such as low membership and insufficient registered capital persist. For instance, in recent years, the farmer cooperative membership rate in Shanxi Province is nearly 14%, but 77.24% of cooperatives have registered capital of less than one million yuan, and more than 90% have fewer than 50 members [16]. The low educational level of cooperative members and the insufficient scale and organization of cooperatives hinder the coordination of agricultural socialized service entities from an industry-wide perspective, leading to gaps, blockages, and disconnects in service provision [17].

Addressing key issues in agricultural supply-side reform, such as reducing excess stock, lowering costs, and filling gaps, require adequate information resources for decision-making. However, the current agricultural socialized service system suffers from information asymmetry among entities, insufficient communication, resource-sharing, aggregation, and mining. This leads to high agricultural product inventories, excessive transaction costs, and supply-demand mismatches. Although some regions have established agricultural technology extensions and public information platforms with central and local government financial support, and some agricultural product sales companies have built online and offline sales platforms with first-hand market demand data, the communication mechanisms between government departments, production entities, and market service entities are inadequate. This results in the fragmentation of effective information and a failure to share highly dispersed, highly relevant, interdependent information. In addition to insufficient information communication and sharing, the degree of information resource aggregation and utilization is also inadequate. The current system fails to quickly and timely integrate the data collected and accumulated from different platforms into complete and valuable information [18]. Consequently, it cannot analyze and predict market dynamics and future trends in agricultural product demand, provide decision-making references for agricultural production entities, or offer directional guidance for agricultural supply-side management. Therefore, the existing service system experiences significant information resource wastage.

4. Design of the Socialized Service Platform and System Architecture for “Internet + Agriculture”

In order to adapt to the new demands of China’s agricultural supply-side reform, the agricultural socialized service system must break through the above two major limitations. To address the problem of mutual fragmentation among the subjects in the current socialized service platform and system, it is necessary to reorganize the socialized service system, introduce professional third-party institutions to undertake the collaborative work in the industry chain that the government is not suitable for and farmers cannot accomplish, and make industry chain collaborative decisions from a holistic perspective [19]. Additionally, regarding the information resource management issues in the current agricultural socialized service system, it is suggested that the “internet +” action plan be introduced into the Chinese agricultural socialized service system. This involves the integration of new-generation information technologies such as mobile internet, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things with agriculture, to provide precise, dynamic, and scientific comprehensive information services for the pre-production, production, and post-production stages of agricultural products. This breaks down the information barriers between the main bodies of Chinese agricultural socialized services, reduces the supply-demand mismatch caused by information asymmetry, lowers production costs, inventory costs, and transaction costs, and improves resource allocation efficiency.

In China, “internet +” is not only a strategy for promoting economic development but also an important means of achieving agricultural modernization. Applying internet technology to agricultural production, sales, and services, can effectively address issues such as information asymmetry and irrational resource allocation, thereby improving overall agricultural production efficiency [20]. Therefore, in the context of agricultural supply-side reform, it is necessary to thoroughly reform the existing agricultural socialized service system through organizational restructuring for industry chain collaborative decision-making and technological restructuring combined with the “internet +” action plan. This transformation involves changes in four aspects: service subjects, service platforms, service content, and operation models. The framework of the reformed agricultural socialized service system is shown in Figure 1.

Regarding service subjects, third-party institutions should be introduced as “integrated service solution providers” as new subjects of agricultural socialized services. From the perspective of the social division of labor, third-party institutions, as collaborative centers in the agricultural industry chain, have the following advantages compared to governments, leading enterprises, and farmer cooperatives: First, professionalism, they can provide more specialized collaborative services; second, independence, they do not represent the individual interests of any production and operation entities on the industrial chain and can handle collaborative issues in the industrial chain more objectively and fairly; third, comprehensiveness, third-party institutions can simultaneously serve multiple agricultural production and operation entities and service providers within a regional scope [21]. In other words, their service targets are multiple supply chains, enabling them to take a more global stance in industry chain collaboration rather than making decisions solely from the perspective of their own single supply chain, like leading enterprises. Therefore, it is more conducive to achieving the goals of supply-side reform. Third-party institutions can provide support for the interaction of information flow and fund flow among relevant entities on the industrial chain and, based on the prediction of demand in the agricultural product market, provide comprehensive, integrated service solutions for agricultural production and operation entities, including matching various service subjects, selecting service content, designing service contracts, etc., which reduces the search costs and transaction costs of agricultural production and operation entities, and improves the quality and efficiency of the agricultural supply system.

Establishing a collaborative platform for the “internet + Agriculture” industry chain system. In the new agricultural socialized service system, it is imperative to break the situation where information and data related to agricultural product supply and demand are fragmented in the business processing systems of different service entities along the industrial chain. With the “integrated service solution provider” at its core, a collaborative platform for the “internet + Agriculture” industry chain system is constructed to guide agricultural production and operation entities to carry out supply-side structural adjustments in accordance with the requirements of the Central Rural Work Conference, promoting high-quality development of new agricultural management entities. The collaborative platform mainly consists of four subsystems: the information resource integration and sharing system, big data analysis system, full-process traceability system, and third-party payment system.

The information resource integration and sharing system is used to integrate and consolidate information resources dispersed among various entities in the agricultural industry chain, providing internal resource-sharing services within the industry chain. The big data analysis system primarily analyzes and explores agricultural production data (including information on high-quality seeds, historical information on land cultivation, seedling information, planting information, pesticide information, fertilizer information, agricultural film information, irrigation information, agricultural machinery information, and agricultural situation information, etc.) and agricultural market data (including market supply and demand information, price trends, information on agricultural production materials markets, international agricultural product market information, etc.) to provide decision-making support for the formation of socialized service solutions. The function of the full-process traceability system mainly integrates agricultural production processes with applications such as logistics distribution and e-commerce, providing a complete set of product traceability information to the market, improving the quality and safety level of agricultural products, and promoting the scale, organization, and standardization of the industry. The third-party payment system is mainly used for electronic settlement services of fund flows between various entities, accelerating the efficiency of fund circulation and reducing transaction costs.

Each service entity, in conjunction with the “internet +” action plan, innovates service content using the coordinated efforts of the integrated service solution provider through the industry chain system. The agricultural technology extension department should promptly establish an agricultural Internet of Things system to promote the development of smart agriculture, conducting agricultural production decision support services such as growth monitoring, remote sensing yield estimation, and major disaster monitoring and early warning for major grain-producing regions and main grain crops. University research departments, guided by the supply-side reform concept of “reducing inventory, lowering costs, and filling gaps”, should carry out regional agricultural development planning under the support of the collaborative platform’s big data analysis system, guiding agricultural production and operation entities in agricultural project development and planting structure adjustments. Financial institutions can provide convenient financing, farmer financial management, agricultural insurance, and other services based on the information, resources, and shared data of relevant entities on the industry chain system, reducing information asymmetry between lenders and borrowers, controlling bank credit risk while reducing agricultural financing costs, directly accessing the collaborative platform of the industry chain system through “internet +”. Agricultural input enterprises and logistics distribution enterprises actively carry out e-commerce construction actions combined with “internet +” to solve the problem of “difficult connection between small farmers and large markets”, providing high-quality and efficient agricultural input supply services for farmers, improving the efficiency of agricultural product circulation, and promoting farmers’ income growth.

Explore a hybrid operating model combining government procurement and operating entity procurement. The “internet + Agriculture” socialized service system breaks the framework of traditional agricultural socialized service systems. As an integrated service solution provider, it needs to build an industry chain system collaborative platform, ensure the daily operation of various subsystems of the platform, and provide industry chain collaborative services. This requires certain costs. Therefore, a new issue arises: who will pay for the services provided by the integrated service solution provider as the collaborative center of the industry chain? In fact, the entities that receive services from the integrated service solution provider can be divided into two categories: one category includes agricultural technology departments, university research institutions, etc., which are non-profit service entities; the other category includes relevant operating entities on the industry chain, such as leading enterprises, farmer cooperatives, large-scale farmers, agricultural input enterprises, logistics distribution enterprises, and agricultural product sales enterprises, to whom personalized service solutions are provided, belonging to for-profit entities. Since non-profit service entities and for-profit service entities have different goal orientations and different spillover effects, it is suggested that for the costs paid by non-profit service entities to the integrated service solution provider due to business needs, government procurement should be adopted, while for personalized, customized services required by operating entities, it is recommended to be carried out through the funding provided by the for-profit entities themselves. Through the hybrid operation of these two procurement methods, resource allocation efficiency can be truly improved, and the role of the industry chain collaborative center can be exerted.

5. Conclusions

With the requirements set forth in recent years by the Central Committee’s No. 1 Document regarding agricultural socialized services, advancing structural reform on the supply side of agriculture has become the focus of attention across various sectors of society. Promoting supply-side reform in agriculture necessarily involves collaborative decision-making along the agricultural industry chain. The agricultural socialized service system, responsible for providing services throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production stages of agricultural products, is crucial for implementing collaboration. It is essential to address the challenges of fragmentation and information asymmetry among its entities. Therefore, research has proposed integrating “internet +” into the construction of the new agricultural socialized service system to break down information barriers among various entities. This involves reducing the operational costs of the agricultural industry chain through technological and organizational restructuring, introducing integrated service solution providers as a new type of third-party institution to provide information coordination, big data analysis, and precise business matching services for agricultural production, circulation, and service entities. This approach aims to address issues such as the imbalance between supply and demand, as well as the low quality and efficiency of supply in the Chinese agricultural market. Although the service platform architecture proposed in this study is innovative, it may face challenges in technical integration and difficulties in stakeholder coordination during actual implementation. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the specific circumstances of different regions and production entities is needed to ensure the effectiveness of the design. To make the platform architecture more universal, it is recommended to make customized adjustments based on the needs of different types of agricultural producers, thereby enhancing its adaptability and effectiveness [22].

However, agricultural supply-side reform is an arduous task and a crucial topic in China’s rural economic work in recent years. The transformation of the agricultural socialized service system is just one focus area in achieving the goals of agricultural supply-side reform. There are still many other aspects of work to be carried out in the future. This article serves as an initial exploration, and further research in other areas relies on the continued efforts of academic colleagues.