Social Enterprises in Organic Farming and Their Usage of IT

In the area of farming, emerging social enterprises organizes farmers to perform organic farming through a new business model, i.e Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, and help farmers sell directly to consumers. Yet individual farmers are still struggling with how to reach consumers and gain their trust. In addition to issues related to consumer relationship management, farmers, especially young farmers who are returning to villages after receiving university education are under great pressure due to the low social status of farmers and the social biases against villagers. In such struggles, IT tools, such as webpage, social network tools (e.g. Facebook, microblog), instant messengers (e.g. WeChat, Facebook Messenger) are adopted by farmers to develop public awareness, cultivate consumers' trust and provide mutual support among famers. Leaders also identify needs which cannot be addressed by market available tools, and initiate development of IT tools.