Ag Retail Moves Online

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

On Friday, I reported on how Chinese consumers, who purchase a lot of American agricultural products, were increasingly buying online. Many through a platform called Pinduoduo, or PDD. The company boasts over 731 million active buyers, and focuses on the sale of agricultural produce, much of which comes directly from producers. Head of sustainability and agricultural impact Xin Yi LIm says COVID also prompted the farmers themselves to look online for inputs.

Lim… “A lot of the farmers in China were not able to access their inputs. So usually they would go to an offline kind of affair. Somebody brings the stuff over, they have a couple of discussions face-to-face with the salesperson. Well, with COVID-19, none of that was happening. So what if they could just go onto the same app that they're buying, you know, their t-shirts and their fridges and whatever from, and also pick up some agricultural inputs ? So whether it's seeds or fertilizer, et cetera. So we started to do that last year in response to COVID. And I think, you know, it's just really interesting when you have such a large user base, the number of things that you can try and, you know, see meaningful results for in a short period of time is just staggering.”

Lim anticipates much more of this ag retail to move to e-commerce.