Last month was extremely lucrative for farmer Huo Liang. With the Spring Festival gift giving season in full swing, his online millet shop witnessed its top yearly sales.
Thousands of farmers like Huo in Tongyu, in the largely agricultural province of Jilin, are using online stores to sell their crops as the government seeks to tackle poverty in the countryside.
Tongyu has a large number of impoverished people. Though it has bountiful harvests of millet, mung bean and sunflower, the crops grown in the region are known for their high quality.
For Huo, who has been farmer for most of his life, learning the role of an online businessman is no easy task. At 52 years old, he had to learn everything from scratch about the Internet.
When he first started out, he would forget to include basic things such as the courier receipt number, making it impossible for buyers to follow the whereabouts of ordered parcels.
Pricing his millet appropriately for the Internet was also difficult, as fierce competition means products must fight for attention with discounts. Huo was again baffled.
Initially, he sold his millet for 15 yuan (2.28 U.S. dollars) every 500 grams. But buyers argued that his price was even higher than those in supermarkets.
Huo insists on the quality of his product. "The problem with online shopping is customers cannot touch and taste the millet themselves until they buy and receive the products," he said.
To better communicate with online buyers, he replaced his outdated phone with a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for 2,000 yuan, a large expense for him.
"With this smart phone, I can talk to potential buyers whenever I want to, instead of chatting with them via a computer," Huo said.
The first two months' business was slow. Huo remained patient. Gradually more customers were referred to his shop and people began making repeat orders.
Though his online shop only came into operation a year ago, he said it has helped him make more than 1,000 yuan extra every month.
Yang Xiaofeng, another local farmer, also made a fortune through e-commerce. Thanks to targeted marketing and better packaging, he successfully sold more than 5,000 kilograms of sorghum rice on the Internet.
While many in affluent coastal areas are getting more wealth by selling products ranging from electronics to socks on the Internet, e-commerce presents a very different picture in rural areas.
The government in Tongyu aims to lift more of its 100,000 poor out of poverty, by utilizing the Internet. Aside from setting up a special office for e-commerce assistance, the government also invited e-commerce consultants and held seminars to tutor interested farmers.
It hopes to decrease its impoverished population by 25,000 annually, mainly through such support measures in e-commerce, the local government said.
Its success will also help China realize its goal to lift 70 million of people in rural areas out of poverty (measured by the poverty line of 2,300 yuan of annual income) by 2020.
Huo is confident about the future. He has already devised his next step - teaming up with several partners and making their own brand.
