Smart Sales Empower Small Farmers: An Integrated Matching Method between Suppliers and Consumers Based on the Information Axiom

Abstract

Small farmers’ sustainable development has important significance for narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas and hastening the promotion of general prosperity in China. Currently, China still has 240 million small farmers. The sale of agricultural products is an important source of their income. Constrained by their small scale, lack of capital, and technology, small farmers often have to adopt a household operation mode. This decentralized agricultural production and operation mode results in significant difficulties for small farmers to benefit from planting and selling agricultural products. Many efforts have been made to help them, such as establishing agricultural product information platforms that can provide supply and demand information to facilitate small farmers’ sales. However, imbalances between suppliers and consumers and cross-regional transaction difficulties still exist. To promote the sustainable development of small farmers, this study develops an intelligent matching method for the transaction of agricultural products between suppliers and consumers. Firstly, a unique attribute set for agricultural products was established. Because most agricultural products are fresh, perishable, and not easily preserved, the general attributes (brand, logistics distance, product grade, and price) of commodities and the specific attributes (freshness, maturity, product certification, seasonal products, place of origin, and product safety) of agricultural products were taken into account. Secondly, by combining fuzzy mathematics with the information axiom, improved amount of information calculation methods for both quantitative and qualitative attributes were put forward. Thirdly, based on the amount of information about all attributes and with the goal of maximizing the transaction-matching degree for both the supplier and consumer, a multiobjective optimization model was proposed. Finally, the effectiveness and accuracy of the method were verified through a case study. In order to solve the dilemma of small farmers, this study proposes an integrated matching method for agricultural product transactions based on the information axiom. Through case verification, this method has good feasibility and effectiveness. It has broad application prospects which can be applied to information portals, e-commerce platforms, and other fields. The application of this method can empower small farmers’ capabilities, facilitate agricultural product sales, and promote small farmers’ sustainable development.