Recently, Pinduoduo, China's largest online platform for agricultural products, won the 2022 Innovation Award issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
According to the official website of FAO, the annual award aims to recognize innovations in food production, processing, trade and consumption, and encourage best practices in building a more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food system.
Winners must strengthen the connection between farmers and consumers and have an impact on supply chains at multiple levels.
"Innovation is the core driving force for the transformation of the agri-food system," said Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 'Four betters' - better production, better nutrition, better environment and better life for all."
It is reported that Pinduoduo, which was founded in 2015, has directly connected more than 16 million farmers and sold their agricultural and sideline products to nearly 900 million consumers through the innovative "farmland cloud spelling" model.
Qu Dongyu (right), Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, presented Pinduoduo with the Annual Innovation Award
Deepen the inclusiveness of agricultural technology and increase the income of small farmers
The FAO award stated that the innovative and inclusive solutions provided by Pinduoduo have enabled small farmers to increase their income and invest in building more productive and environmentally sustainable production methods.
At present, most of China's agricultural production areas present the characteristics of "big country and small farmers". Compared with the secondary and tertiary industries, agriculture has a broader development space in terms of digitalization.
Against the background of the government's vigorous promotion of digital agriculture, Pinduoduo, which started its business with the promotion of agricultural products, also regards the growing trend of agricultural digitalization as the key to unlocking the value of the agricultural industry chain.
Chen Lei, Chairman and CEO of Pinduoduo, pointed out that since its inception, Pinduoduo has used big data, cloud computing and distributed artificial intelligence technologies to create a "cloud farming" model, gathering hundreds of millions of consumers from the two dimensions of time and space. The demand for agricultural and sideline products combines scattered agricultural production capacity and scattered demand for agricultural products in the cloud to form a virtual national market.
This not only greatly optimizes the intermediate transaction link, reduces the sales cost of agricultural products, but also greatly reduces the circulation time of agricultural products, allowing agricultural products to reach consumers' vegetable baskets and fruit plates directly from the field, and reducing the use of various fresh-keeping chemicals.
"Part of the cost optimized by innovation is given to the farmers at the source, and some to the end consumers. In the transaction of fresh agricultural products, we always adhere to the 'zero commission' policy, which has also led to the rapid development of some small varieties into "National fruit", Lin Xinyi, executive director of sustainable development and agricultural influence of Pinduoduo, said that even a small group of consumers is enough to allow some small varieties to be planted sustainably. "This protects biodiversity to a certain extent. ".
The niche fruit ginseng is sold on the new e-commerce platform Pinduoduo and has become a hot item on the Internet
In Shilin County, Yunnan Province, some new local farmers sold ginseng fruit on Pinduoduo, which drove the local price of ginseng fruit to rise from 0.5 yuan per kilogram to 4 yuan, helping local small farmers to increase their income significantly.
This directly promotes the optimization of local agricultural production layout.
"In the past, the income from planting flue-cured tobacco was about 3,000 yuan per mu, but after planting ginseng fruit, the income per mu increased to 8,000 yuan, which is more than double that before." Local farmer Wang Qiaosheng introduced.
Technology is improving, narrowing the gap between research and agricultural technology application
New farmers who are proficient in using the Internet platform are one of the keys to deepening the inclusiveness of agricultural technology.
According to the FAO, Pinduoduo is focused on creating opportunities for young people to develop their skills in agriculture, including training and encouraging "new farmers" to establish their own online businesses.
Up to now, more than 126,000 "new peasants" born after 1995 have started businesses on the Pinduoduo platform, accounting for about 13% of all agriculture-related businesses.
These young people are spread all over China's urban and rural areas, women account for more than 31%, many of them are "second generation farmers" or even "third generation farmers".
Like Pinduoduo, they grew up in the era of the mobile Internet. Most of them are highly educated, good at integrating the upstream and downstream of the agricultural industry chain, and understand the added value that technology, standardization, scale, and branding bring to agriculture.
In addition to nurturing and cultivating "new and new farmers", Pinduoduo is also investing in more front-ends such as digital planting to help transform cutting-edge academic research into practical application of agricultural technology.
Since 2020, Pinduoduo has cooperated with top institutions such as China Agricultural University and Zhejiang University to hold three consecutive "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Competitions", which provides young researchers with a starting platform to display their talents and help them develop a series of Smart farming technology solutions to help small farmers.
As a technical consultant, FAO has also participated in Pinduoduo's "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Competition" for several consecutive years.
It is understood that the automatic planting system developed by the participating team "Zhiduoberry" in the first "Duoduo Agricultural Research and Technology Competition" has been implemented in the fruit greenhouses of Dandong Donggang, helping traditional farmers realize "one greenhouse managed by two people" to "one person managed The industrial upgrading of "Seven Greenhouses".
Participants in this competition will continue to practice and promote their agricultural technology solutions in major food and fruit production areas.
The final of the third "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Competition" will be held at the Vertical Agriculture Research Center of Shanghai Guangming Home Port
Pinduoduo’s latest financial report on November 29 shows that in the third quarter of 2022, the company’s research and development expenses hit a new high, a year-on-year increase of 11.4% to 2.7 billion yuan.
Liu Jun, the company's vice president of finance, said, "We will continue to increase investment in technological innovation and use technology to create long-term value."
It is understood that Pinduoduo is the only global winner of this year's award.
When accepting the award on behalf of the company in Rome, Lin Xinyi said that she was honored to receive the award for promoting the digitalization of agriculture with inclusive digital technology and agricultural technology.
"The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations awarded Pinduoduo the 2022 Innovation Award is a very important affirmation, that is, through a systematic approach, it will create opportunities for young people to flex their muscles in the agricultural field and develop more cost-effective agricultural technology solutions for small farmers. , can play an important role in promoting a more sustainable future for agriculture.” Lin Xinyi said that Pinduoduo will strive to help producers and consumers across the country and the world achieve better production, better nutrition, A better environment and a better life, and continue to practice "science and technology for the better".