On July 4, Bainian CO-OP Farm S-MART, the first Chongqing public-benefit smart agricultural market invested by Chongqing CO-OP, opened for customers. What makes the 1,500-square-meter market so smart?

E-payment applied in the market

Convenient intelligent electronic scale and e-payment

Located at the Lower Tuwan Road, Shapingba District, the Bainian CO-OP Farm S-MART was still busy at 10 p.m. The display screen near the door showed that over 2,000 transactions had been completed that day.

Mrs. Huang, who had been running a vegetable stall at the market for 30 years, remembers that the market used to be dirty and messy, with plastic garbage and leftover vegetable everywhere. Now she is pleased with the clean and tidy environment. She is most satisfied that the management of the market has equipped each seller with an intelligent electronic scale to weigh the agricultural products. She only needs to input the unit price of vegetables in the automated merchant system in advance, and the display screen will show the price and payment code after the product is placed on the scale. “It’s much more convenient, and you don’t have to bargain with buyers,” said Mrs. Huang.

Bainian CO-OP Farm S-mart

“In the past, some bad sellers cheated customers with inaccurate scales and gave short weight. Now, with intelligent scales, the amount of money and total weight are shown publicly, so we really trust them.” One consumer Ms. Liu said, “e-payment brings us much convenience,” Mrs. Huang said.

“Co-built by Chongqing CO-OP and Chongqing Agricultural Products Group (directly under the CQ S&M Group)”, Bainian CO-OP Farm S-MART is the first standardized and smart public-benefit agricultural market in Chongqing,” said Mou Rui, Director of Investment Department of Chongqing Agricultural Products Group Market Investment Construction Co., Ltd. Exploiting new services such as advanced electronic trading system in agricultural market, it strives to achieve honest trading, price transparency, and product traceability, to bring benefits to consumers, sellers and farmers.

Scroll display of spot check data on the screen

Scroll display of spot check data on the screen

Food safety is the most significant concern for consumers. For example, citizens worry about the residues of pesticides and microorganisms in vegetables. In this market, there is a pesticide residue inspection room. Every day, the market manager will conduct spot checks on the agricultural products in the market, and show the spot check data on the display screen in real time for consumers. In addition, consumers can also take agrarian products to the market for inspection.

What if the products are unqualified after a spot check? In case of such a situation, sellers will remove unfit goods, and their credit points will be deducted in accordance with the market seller management credit evaluation mechanism. If this situation repeats, the seller will be eliminated from the market, which ensures food safety of the intelligent agricultural market.

The receipts of consumers are useful that they can be used for food safety traceability.

Future agricultural product supply mode 

According to the person in charge of market management, in the next 2-3 years, the Agricultural Products Group will build more than 100 Bainian CO-OP Farm S-MARTs in the main urban areas. After the market size gets larger, the mode of “unified purchase, delivery, and inspection” will be adopted, and the Agricultural Products Group will conduct a unified inspection on agricultural products, and then deliver the products to sellers of Bainian CO-OP Farm S-MART. By providing cheap, quality and characteristic products, effectively reducing the purchase cost and lowering the market price, the supply mode of “self-run stalls, direct purchase at the bases and centralized distribution” will be formed, to ensure the low cost under the premise of food safety.