In recent years, more and more agricultural products from western regions have emerged from the mountains and entered people's lives, such as goji berries from Ningxia, apples from Xinjiang, Pu'er tea from Yunnan, and cordyceps from Gansu. The "2024 Taobao Harvest Festival Report" recently released shows that in the first eight months of this year, among the 50 counties with the fastest growth rate in agricultural product sales, 23 are from the western region, distributed in seven provinces including Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. Among them, Zaduo County in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, has the fastest growth rate in agricultural e-commerce, with sales increasing 675 times year-on-year. Guo Hongdong, Director of the Rural E-commerce Research Center at the China Rural Development Research Institute of Zhejiang University, analyzed that from the supply side, western provinces such as Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Guizhou are all major agricultural provinces with abundant agricultural resources and distinct characteristics; From the demand side, economically developed regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta have a significant demand for high-quality agricultural products, with Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu ranking among the top 10 provinces in terms of agricultural product consumption. In addition, the infrastructure construction in the western region is constantly improving, and the logistics system is gradually becoming smooth, laying a good foundation for the development of e-commerce. The 54th Statistical Report on the Development of Internet in China believes that with the continuous improvement of the user stickiness of the short video platform, the short video e-commerce business has developed steadily, and the commercialization efficiency has continued to improve. As of June, short video users accounted for 95.5% of the total internet users. Guo Hongdong stated that digital technology has become a bridge connecting production and consumption. As a new agricultural tool, mobile phones have solved the problem of information asymmetry. In the past, consumers did not understand the production process of agricultural products, and many good products were hidden in deep mountains and could not be sold. E-commerce live streaming can transparently and intuitively display various aspects such as planting, processing, and packaging to the vast number of netizens, enhancing their willingness to purchase and expanding the sales scope of agricultural products. For example, during this year's Harvest Festival, a Taobao anchor recommended sweet and sour, delicious, and fragrant prickly pears to consumers. The live broadcast drove a popular "NFC freshly squeezed juice of the first prickly pear", with a transaction volume of 3 million yuan in just one hour in the live broadcast room. The report shows that in the first eight months of this year, live sales of agricultural products on Taobao and Tmall platforms increased by 33.2% year-on-year. E-commerce is not only a sales channel, but also an important way to build agricultural brands. Through e-commerce platforms, merchants can real-time grasp changes in consumer demand, determine product standards, and design packaging to turn agricultural products into agricultural commodities, thereby achieving brand upgrading and increasing the added value of agricultural products Zuo Chenming, Deputy Director of Taotian Group Research Center and Director of Rural Revitalization Research Center, said. In Guo Hongdong's view, e-commerce not only reduces the cost and threshold of opening stores, but also innovates through models such as semi trust management to further help farmers increase their income. The semi custodial model means that merchants do not need to open their own stores, but directly entrust to the platform, which provides corresponding services such as traffic operation and improving business efficiency. Merchants are only responsible for ensuring quality and logistics. After settling in Taochang for three months, Tang Yongzhong from Tongzi County, Zunyi City, Guizhou Province, was awarded the title of "King of Cowpeas". The locally produced cowpeas sold one million orders within three months. From hygiene conditions to production capacity planning, and even packaging specifications, the platform will dispatch professionals to provide guidance, greatly reducing our operating costs and increasing profits. Tang Yongzhong, who has earned money, plans to invest 10 million yuan to purchase modern production equipment and lead 4000 farmers in the surrounding area to increase production and become prosperous. The sales problem of agricultural products has been solved, but production in many regions is still not standardized enough. Standardization is the next key direction that e-commerce needs to focus on. Guo Hongdong suggested that a full industry support system for production, processing, packaging, storage, and transportation should be established, and local leading enterprises, supply chain enterprises, and "new farmers" should be encouraged to leverage their respective advantages and form an organized production model. New farmers "refer to individuals with certain e-commerce operation experience who return to their hometowns to start businesses, which can help promote the transformation and upgrading of rural industries and drive local farmers to increase their income and become prosperous. Chen Zhiguo, the person in charge of Tmall Douyifang Food Enterprise Store, is one of them. Since he returned to Funing County, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province in 2020 to start his business, Chen Zhiguo has been committed to inheriting and carrying forward the cause of intangible cultural heritage, combining intangible cultural heritage with e-commerce, and the five flavored small round dried tofu, bittern pot tofu and other intangible cultural heritage products sold in his store are highly praised. Our investigation found that on average, each online store directly drives employment for 3 people. In 2022, there will be 7780 Taobao villages and 2429 Taobao towns nationwide with 3.6 million stores, driving employment for over 10 million people Zuo Chenming introduced that some regions have formed an industrial cluster model of "e-commerce+industrial belt". For example, Xiaying Village in Yunxi County, Hubei Province has built an e-commerce oriented industrial chain, adding positions such as material processing workers, customer service, logistics and distribution personnel, network technicians, and salespeople, achieving diversified employment models. In the future, as the construction of digital rural areas enters a new stage, rural e-commerce will further exert its employment creation effect and industrial upgrading effect, playing the two cards of creating "digital new jobs" and promoting industrial upgrading "accelerators", making it an important driving force for rural revitalization. (New Society)