Industry News

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the added value of China's primary industry in the first three quarters of this year was 589.94 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. According to the global added value data of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries released by the World Bank, China's primary industry continues to rank first in the world in terms of scale. However, production scale and market capacity cannot automatically translate into an enterprise's international competitiveness. The key to the growth of agricultural enterprises is to effectively connect dispersed production entities, diverse consumer demands, and global resources, forming a stable supply chain, sustained innovation capabilities, and reliable brand reputation.

 

From the perspective of production, agriculture in China is currently based on small farmers, with significant regional differences and a wide variety of products. The distribution system has the characteristics of origin distribution, wholesale trading, and multi-level distribution. The production of bulk agricultural products in the United States relies more on large-scale farms, forming strong advantages in mechanization, standardization, and specialized division of labor. These differences are closely related to resource endowment, population size, and market structure. The development of Chinese agricultural enterprises should be based on their own production and consumption characteristics, connecting small farmers to larger markets through order procurement, socialized services, processing logistics, and quality management, while improving organizational efficiency and ensuring that farmers can reasonably share the value-added benefits of the industry.

 

The global competition in agriculture has already surpassed the planting and breeding process. Large grain trading enterprises, as well as multinational corporations in the fields of meat and poultry, fruits and vegetables, seed industry, agricultural materials, and agricultural machinery, organize global resources through procurement networks, processing facilities, logistics systems, and technical services. A number of backbone enterprises have also been formed in the fields of grain, dairy, animal husbandry, and food processing in our country. With the extension of the agricultural value chain, enterprises such as drones, intelligent equipment, and digital services have entered the production process, while new retail, new tea drinks, and chain catering are driving raw material procurement, product processing, and supply chain construction from the consumer end. To observe the competitiveness of agricultural enterprises, it is necessary to expand the perspective to the entire agricultural food system as well as related technology and service fields.

 

Our agricultural enterprises have a relatively solid market foundation for participating in international division of labor, and changes in consumption structure provide new space for enterprises to expand along the industrial chain. The demand for high-value agricultural products is beneficial for enterprises to extend from procurement and sales to cooperation with production areas, sorting and processing, cold chain logistics, and brand management. However, the expansion of import scale does not necessarily mean that enterprises naturally have global operational capabilities. The ability to stably control quality, losses, and delivery costs still needs to be accumulated in the long run.

 

The coffee and tea beverage industries also demonstrate the driving role of the consumer side in the agricultural supply chain. With the development of the domestic market, relevant enterprises have put forward higher requirements for raw material quality, procurement stability, and processing standards, promoting the extension of procurement relationships to the origin. For enterprises, long-term competitiveness comes from the collaborative organization of raw materials, processing, and consumer demand. Only by establishing stable production cooperation relationships, quality traceability mechanisms, and supply chain management capabilities can consumer market advantages be transformed into international business advantages.

 

New technologies are expanding the competitive space for agricultural enterprises. Artificial intelligence, drones, and intelligent equipment can improve efficiency in field monitoring, precision operations, and production management; Breeding and biotechnology can help improve production performance and enhance resource utilization efficiency. The business model that combines existing technology and inputs will coexist with new models such as algorithms, models, and professional services. A specific analysis should be conducted on the separation of technology and materials: some technologies can be independently output through services, but still need to be applied in conjunction with seeds, agricultural materials, equipment, and field conditions. Chinese enterprises should attach importance to transforming individual technologies into verifiable and scalable production solutions, and improve overseas services, intellectual property protection, and local adaptation capabilities.

 

This year, the No. 1 central document of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly put forward the idea of "cultivating agricultural enterprises with international competitiveness", and linked it with the diversification of imports, expansion of exports of advantageous agricultural products and participation in international food and agriculture governance. Enterprises should enhance their competitiveness through technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and international cooperation, while maintaining a stable domestic agricultural foundation and ensuring the security of food and important agricultural product supply, so as to form a mutually supportive relationship between overseas operations and domestic industrial development.

 

Cultivating agricultural enterprises with international competitiveness requires more targeted policy support. Improve public information services such as trade, investment, inspection and quarantine, and technical standards, and support enterprises to strengthen cooperation in production areas, processing logistics, and overseas marketing service network construction; Improve financing, insurance, and risk management services based on the agricultural production cycle and cross-border business characteristics; Encourage enterprises to form stable cooperation mechanisms with farmers, cooperatives, and research institutions. Policy evaluation can focus not only on the operational performance of enterprises, but also on their technological contributions, supply chain resilience, and the effect of increasing agricultural income. By continuously improving the capabilities of enterprises and relying on the domestic market to shape global resource allocation advantages, we can provide solid support for agricultural modernization and higher-level opening up.

 

(Source: Economic Daily Author: Hu Bingbing Author: Researcher at the Institute of Rural Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

 

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