The impact of business relationships on safe production behavior by farmers: Evidence from China

Abstract

This paper focuses on the impact of business relationships on safe production behavior by farmers in China. Data collected from 410 vegetable farmers were used with a propensity score matching model for estimating. We found that the co-operative membership without marketing transactions had no significant effect on whether farmers had vegetable certification, whereas the membership did positively affect farmers' attention to pesticide toxicity and the application of soil-testing results to fertilization compared with farmers who participated in market exchanges. These results show that farmers who participate in co-operative membership with marketing transactions are more likely to own certifications, attend to toxicity and apply soil-testing results. We also found that contract farming has a positive effect on whether farmers have certification, whereas no significant effect was observed on the attention paid to toxicity and the application of soil-testing results.

Welfare effects of vegetable producers' inclusiveness in supply chain coordination: direct effects and spillovers

“…There is extensive literature regarding the role of farmer cooperatives. Both theoretical and empirical findings from these studies are basically consistent in that farmer cooperatives have positive effects on members' market access (Staal et al, 1997), economic performance (Michalek et al, 2018;Verhofstadt and Maertens, 2014), investment and technology adoption (Ma et al, 2018a, b;Chagwiza et al, 2016), product quality safety and risk control practices (Ji et al, 2019;Li and Guo, 2019) and so on, though the magnitude of effects is heterogeneous across sectors and geographical areas. Ma and Abdulai (2016), one of the research studies that is relevant to the current study, use a dataset of apple farmers and find that cooperative membership positively influences apple yield, net farm income and household income.…”

Farmers’ technology preference and influencing factors for pesticide reduction: evidence from Hubei Province, China

“…The construction of agricultural product brands needs to follow certain production standards, especially the prohibition of the use of highly toxic chemical pesticides. This can not only increase the premium of the agricultural product brand, but also maintain its long-term reputation of the brand (Li and Guo 2019 ). Policy variables affecting farmer’s adoption of pesticide reduction technologies.…”

Pesticide reduction: Technical preference and influencing factors of rice farmers in China

“…The construction of agricultural product brands needs to follow certain production standards, especially the prohibition of the use of highly toxic chemical pesticides. This can not only increase the premium of the agricultural product brand, but also maintain its long-term reputation of the brand (Li and Guo, 2019).…”