Adoption of food safety and quality standards by China’s agricultural cooperatives

Understanding farmer cooperatives' self-inspection behavior to guarantee agri-product safety in China

“…Basically, when a manager faces greater difficulty, he/she will intentionally avoid the task. Jin and Zhou (2011) directed attention to the food safety problems that have been caused by excessive pesticide residues in recent years and discussed effective ways to organize safe production and quality standardization through specialized farmer cooperatives. According to the theory of principal-agent, the manager of the cooperative should supervise the behavior of the farmers whose products are sold to co-ops to reduce the moral risks that arise from the asymmetry of quality information (Liu & Zhang, 2014).…”

Food Safety, Market Organization, Trade and Development

“…Agricultural cooperatives provide both a larger scale of "production base" to share related costs as well providing a way to organize production practices. Jin and Zhou (2011) found that among the vegetable cooperatives in Zhejiang Province studied, larger cooperatives (approximated by land area), those with a more positive attitude about food quality and safety standards, and those owning a brand name were more likely to adopt standards. At the same time, an agricultural cooperative's access to destination markets-both supermarkets and foreign markets-is enhanced by adoption of food quality and safety standards.…”

“…Most small-scale farmers cannot afford the costs of implementing the standardized practices. In addition, some farmers are not well educated and do not understand the requirements for standardized production practices that can assure safer foods (Jin and Zhou 2011). This leads to problems of improper and excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers, use of illegal chemicals and food additives, and poor sanitation practices.…”

Rural development strategies and government roles in the development of farmers’ cooperatives in China

“…In terms of the third element of social contrib-utions to rural development, each cooperative in our case study adopted certain types of food quality production standards and registered a brand for their products, which would facilitate food safety in China (see also Jin & Zhou, 2011). In addition, as the main actors in FPCs, farmers gained experience in cooperation and democratic governance by electing cooperative leaders and participating in decision-making (although this was limited to the production domain for common members in our case studies).…”