Wenjun Fang（wf646）
Live streaming–a new opportunity for local farmers in China
Online purchasing today became the primary way of shopping among the young population in China. After the rise of many different shopping platforms, live streaming became the new way of shopping. Recently, live streaming has also become a new opportunity to sell fresh farm products and establish a new selling-buying system for more people.
It has been a huge challenge for farmers to sell their products during the pandemic time. Usually, local farmers will sell all the farm products they produced to buyers. The buyers will sell those raw products to food factories, and after farm product processing, they will be sold to the market. The farmers do not have a direct communication way to the food factories. Therefore, during the pandemic time, it is hard for buyers to get into every village like usual and finally caused the overstock of farm products. Though the consumers have buying demand for fresh food, the farmers have no way to communicate with the food factories or the consumers, which makes the trading hard to happen. In this case, live streaming became a new opportunity for both farmers and consumers. Start from 2017, the live streaming became the new and most popular way of selling goods online. Leading by Taobao, a famous shopping app in China, live streaming began to appear on different social media platforms, and all attract a huge number of audience. During the pandemic time, the government and Taobao began to sell the farm products directly by live streaming to help the farmers, which gained a huge success. According to Taobao’s data, more than ten tons of fruits in 14 days and helped farmers from nearly 20 provinces in China. In one live streaming broadcast by Taobao’s official account, they had sold nearly 5,000 kilograms of tomatoes, more than 7,000 kilograms of cucumbers, and 2,500 kilograms of strawberries. Because there is no mediator or factory processing, the price is much lower than in the supermarket. After paid online, products will deliver to your home in a few days. The consumers are also willing to purchase fresh fruits or vegetables since it is cheaper, more comfortable, and more convenient than usual.
On the other hand, selling fresh farm products makes the elderly population focus on live streaming and online purchasing. It is a much easier way for older people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but they are not familiar with the new shopping way and not believing in such a way. The pandemic makes older people try such a new way of shopping, which also received a good result. For farmers, they can also earn more money by selling products directly to the customers. However, it is also a challenge for the logistics system, which needs more discussion in the future.
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