Farmers’ social networks’ effects on the sustainable production of fresh apples in China’s Shaanxi province (original) (raw)
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Science of The Total Environment, 2015
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Cooperatives are established to improve farmers' production conditions, to increase their bargaining power and to enable them to benefit from modern value chains. In China, farmers are members of a cooperative for multiple reasons. Little is known on whether and how cooperative membership affects farmers' choice of marketing channels. This paper examines determinants of farmers' choice of marketing channels, especially how cooperative membership impacts upon this choice. Our analysis is based on survey data collected in 2015 among 625 apple growing farm households in the provinces Shaanxi and Shandong. We employ endogenous switching probit models to deal with potential endogeneity of membership in estimating the determinants of marketing channel choices. We find that cooperative membership has a positive impact on selling to wholesalers and a negative impact on selling to small dealers, but no significant impact on selling to the cooperative itself. As products sold through cooperatives generally comply with relatively stringent food quality and safety standards, these results imply that policies promoting cooperative members to sell their products through cooperatives are likely to have a significant impact on food quality and food safety in China.
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Many recent researches focus on the sustainable agriculture and the advantage of the adoption of good agriculture practices for farmers, consumers and for the environment. In this work, we agree on one thing: better information diffusion leads to better adoption of good agricultural practices by farmers. The objective of our article is double. Firstly, we aim to propose an analytical model of the relevant factors which can help to better understanding the process of adoption of these practices. Our framework is developed around three main elements: the individual level (the information seeker), the economic level and the social network level. Secondly, we aim to test empirically this model, by confronting it to some field experience in agro-environmental practices. Our first empirical results put a lot of emphasis on the importance of the formal network in knowledge transfer. Finally, we discuss the implication for theory and practice and present the next steps of this ongoing resea...
Journal of Economic Behavior
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Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology, 2019
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Small-scale farmers constitute the main Chinese agricultural production. Based on the investigation and relevant data from 500 small-scale farmers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province, this paper analyzes their behavioral characteristics of experience from family, friends and neighbors, education background and cultivation areas have a positive effect on the frequency of applying pesticides, while gender has a negative one. Therefore, farmers should keep on learning to master advanced technology and concept and promote the awareness of safety production. Besides, they also need to improve self-quality, regularize their acts of production and ensure the safe quality of agricultural products from the beginning.
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