E-commerce and Speciality Product Development Boost Agricultural Sales

Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. Ltd., established by Liu Xingwei in her hometown after she noticed rising demand for green agricultural products among middle-class and high-end urban consumers, only produced vacuum-packed millet and stone-ground flour in the early days of its existence. Two types of agricultural gift boxes were produced prior to the first Spring Festival holiday in which Liu was living back in her hometown in Linqu County, Weifang City, Shandong Province, in early 2016 after moving from Shandong's Qingdao City in March 2015. She sold a few hundred and sensed a bright future for high-quality agricultural products.

The quality of the products Liu was purchasing from the farmers she worked with was inconsistent due to a lack of cultivation standardisation, however. In 2018, she began leasing more than 50 mu of land and built a demonstration site featuring speciality crops and other high-quality crops, including various sweet potato, peanut, and Qingdao Agricultural University (QAU)-developed coloured wheat varieties. Liu also began providing growers with quality seed, ensuring that they adhere to unified cultivation standards and techniques, and paying more for the products they now produce than what they were able to obtain before, which has resulted in farmers' revenue increasing by more than RMB500 per mu.

The entrepreneur regards producing speciality products to be critical for her company. She inquired with many organisations with regard to the development of such products and ultimately signed a strategic cooperation agreement with QAU related to its coloured wheat. Six of the university's instructors are currently providing Liu and her partners with seed and technical support, and some of their farmland has also become a QAU-run experimental and educational base.

Especially popular with farmers as a result of its high yields, good quality, and higher profits, the coloured grain developed by QAU is currently grown on a 500-mu cultivation base managed by Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. Somewhat uncommon in the market, the black, blue, and purple grain is made into nutritious and flavourful products, such as flour, oatmeal, and whole wheat, using stone milling and other special procedures.

Regular wheat flour sells for a little more than RMB4 per kg, and regular stone-ground flour sells for RMB11.6 per kg, whereas a kilogram of coloured flour can sell for more than RMB20 and is often in short supply.

The farmers that Liu works with also receive a large quantity of pre-orders for several types of sweet potatoes that QAU has provided assistance with. After six years of hard work, the Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. now operates a cultivation base that covers a total of 2,000 mu of land, has obtained China's food production licence, and developed more than a hundred products in four main categories – multigrain porridge, multigrain flour, stone-milled flour, and snack food – including organic grain and cereal, extra-nutritious mountain-grown millet, colourful stone-milled vegetable flour, meal replacement powder, dried fruit, dried sweet potatoes and hawthorn strips.

An influencer promotes apples at the Linqu Live Commerce Festival.

“I am the brand spokesperson for my hometown's agricultural products,” Liu explained in late 2021. “My likeness appears on them, which indicates that I personally guarantee their quality.”

Having been attending exhibitions and other events around China for the purpose of expanding sales channels, Liu officially embarked on an e-commerce journey in 2018 amidst the country's continued boom in this area in order to complement the efforts. She opened stores on major online shopping platforms as well as a platform that connects farmers with consumers and recruited more than 100 online shopping agents across China.

A new aspect of online shopping, live commerce makes it possible for people to instantly purchase products that are being promoted by hosts in real time and participate by posting messages and other reactions. A combination of livestreaming and e-commerce, it has transformed the retail industry and established itself as a major sales channel in recent years.

“Live commerce is the next major trend,” noted Liu, who began engaging in the practice in the spring of 2020. “It has already attracted a large portion of conventional e-commerce traffic. We must catch up.”

“I was very nervous during my first livestream,” she recalled. “I wasn't familiar with any livestreaming terminology that could be used to address and communicate with the audience, but I knew the products well, so I introduced them [and explained various details] for four hours while I held my phone in my hand.”

Liu also mentioned that she generated just a bit over RMB500 in sales but enjoyed the work and was a little reluctant to go offline when she was done.

Liu created a livestreaming studio featuring lighting equipment, smartphone stands, and shelving designed to showcase various products at her cultivation base. The fact that people cooked more than usual when vigorous COVID-19 prevention and control measures were in place contributed to the company's livestreaming efforts getting off to a good start and its coloured flour becoming especially popular. Online sales now account for more than half of its total revenue and continue to grow steadily.

The Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. has also been formally recognised for its impact and performance, receiving awards and designations such as “Top Ten Linqu County E-commerce Enterprise” in 2019 and “Excellent Linque E-commerce Enterprise” and “Weifang City E-commerce Demonstration Enterprise” in 2020.

In 2021, it generated over RMB10 million of revenue and more than RMB1 million of profit, six university graduates were engaged in related undertakings, and the operation supported the employment of more than 50 villagers.

Liu has been establishing a livestreaming team devoted to capturing village life that records footage in places like fields and factories in addition to her company's livestreaming studio and prioritises rural women, including those with children, husbands, or other family members who work in other areas and are thus left behind. She has received applications from many mothers and has also been working on attracting other types of staff who are willing to work in villages. The altruistic business leader hopes that greater numbers of young people who are from rural areas but living elsewhere will return to their hometowns in order to help high-quality agricultural products make their way to more people's tables and boost incomes in the surrounding regions.

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)

Click on the following link to read the story Start-up Journey of a Rural Entrepreneur in Shandong’s Linqu Countyto find out how Liu Xingwei got started with the undertaking.