Technology and Infrastructure Considerations for E-Commerce in Chinese Agriculture

作     者：GENG Shu REN Tian-zhi WANG Mao-hua 

作者机构：Department of Plant Sciences University of California Davis CA 95616 USA Institute of Natural Resource and Regional Planning Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Beijing 100081 P.R.China Key Laboratory on Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research Ministry of Education/China Agricultural University Beijing 100081 P.R.China 

出 版 物：《Agricultural Sciences in China》 (中国农业科学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2007年第6卷第1期

页      面：1-10页

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 120301[管理学-农业经济管理] 12[管理学] 1203[管理学-农林经济管理] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 0901[农学-作物学] 0902[农学-园艺学] 

主　　题：information technology standardization e-commerce agricultural product 

摘      要：Information technology （IT） was one of the most intensively studied and extensively applied technologies in the 20th century and its research and application will be even more accelerated in the 21st century. The impact of IT is more farreaching than any one may have had imagined, encompassing all facets and sectors of society. Economically, e-commerce generated more than $1.5 trillion in the US in 2004 and is projected to be 30, 15 and 2.6% of the total manufacturing, whole sales and retail sales in the US in 2006 respectively. IT research in agriculture has so far been particularly applied to such fields as precision farming and bioinformatics and in extension and farming practices. As such, its potential application in agricultural e-commerce has only begun to be explored. The United States Department of Agriculture has identified four different functions that e-commerce firms perform in the agricultural sector. They are： （1） information distribution, （2） input supply, （3） commodity trading floor, and （4） logistics/supply chain management. Unlike other industrial products, agricultural products are much more diverse and difficult to process and handle. For instance, fruits and vegetables are perishable and have to reach the market and the hands of consumers within a short period of time. One of the problems for IT applications in agriculture is the lack of standard measures in characteristics and quality of perishable produce and processing foods. Standards are pre-requisites for effective IT application and e-commerce. According to the Global Commerce Initiative, standards bring scalability, portability and affordability to the business process. Standards speed up the supply chain and reduce errors and protect technology investments and ensure system to system interaction and interoperability. Because the complexity of issues involved in standardization, the process of standardization must involve the input and discussion from all segments of the society. Being