Study On Behaviors Of Small-scale Farmers Engaging In Edible Mushroom Cultivation In Shandong Province

Cultivation of edible mushrooms is a typical form of ecological agriculture; it bears the virtues of not opposing threats to food security, not taking land from cereal crop cultivation, not requiring fertile land, and not largely depending on seasonal factors. In recent years, as the industry advances, a change in industrial organizational forms has emerged, namely the uprising of large-scale enterprises engaging in industrialized edible mushroom cultivation. However, 85.7% of the edible mushroom production still comes from small-scaled farmers; it is safe to say that the edible mushroom cultivation is still dominated by small-scale farmers. Based on the analysis of small-scale farmers’ behaviors, applying the theory of industrial organization and farmers’ behavior, production behavior and performance of small-scale farmers engaging in edible mushroom cultivation were studied.This dissertation first performed analysis on production and sales behaviors of small-scale farmers, building on data from field surveys and questionnaires, it was concluded that the scale of operation of farmers is usually limited, production facilities is crude, and level of organization is low. Based on the analysis, the disadvantages of farmers was studied; namely low operating technique, limited sales channels, expensive transactional cost and vulnerability towards market risks. To cope with market competition, a part of small-scale farmers chose to cooperate, joining industrial organizations. This manuscript mainly performed in-depth study on farmers’ horizontal cooperation behavior and co-opetition behavior with large-scale enterprises.As for horizontal cooperation behavior, survey statistics showed that the percentage of farmers enrolled in cooperatives is 68.7%, most of them has been enrolled for a relatively long period of time, while during the past three years, enrollment rate has not seen much growth. In the process of production, farmers are highly cooperative as of raw material purchase and technical support; contract enforcement wise, the rate of contract signing is very low. This paper also implemented a binary logistic regression on factors effecting farmers’ intention to cooperate horizontally. The estimates showed that gender of farmers, level of education, output of edible mushrooms, experience in mushroom cultivation, degree of specialization, distance from local grocery market, government promotion and enrollment status of neighboring farmers have significant positive influence on farmers’ intention to cooperate horizontally. Amongst all the factors, government promotion, experience in mushroom cultivation and output of edible mushrooms are the most significant ones.As for co-opetition with large-scale enterprises, this paper first conceptualized a theoretic model of co-opetition. In the model, it was argued that dependency on resources and pursuit of maximization of personal benefits are the motives for co-opetition. By co-opetiting with each other, both farmers and enterprises could optimize the allocation of resources, improve level of specialization, promote efficiency, reduce production cost, expand market shares and increase the amount of income, so as to maximize the overall benefit. However, co-opetition can also give rise to uncertainty of income and increase of internal management fee of enterprises, as well as higher market exit cost and compromised autonomy and flexibility of farmers. The mechanism of co-opetition evolution and its corresponding influencing factors were then analyzed employing evolutionary game theory, pointing out that cost, excess earnings and the distribution of excess earnings have significant influence on the evolution of co-opetitive relationship. Finally, according to data acquired in field surveys, the actual co-opetitive behavior was analyzed, arriving at the conclusion that the overall co-opetitive relationship between farmers and enterprise is competition dominant, to promote cooperation is the priority of co-opetitive behavior development.As for the performance of small-scale farmers, two indexes were applied to the competitive performance valuation of farmers from different organizational forms. As far as the cost-income index was concerned, income per unit and profit rates of farmers free from any industrial organizations are the lowest; those of the farmers who are members of cooperatives are the highest. In other words, the performance of farmers joining cooperatives is higher than that of farmers who co-opete with enterprises, and that of self-sufficient farmers is the lowest. Judging from technical efficiency, the three efficiency parameters of self-sufficient farmers are all lower than those of farmers joining industrial organizations. To sum up, performance of self-sufficient farmers are significantly lower than those who have joined industrial organizations.Based on performance valuation, factors effecting farmer’ performance were analyzed. On one hand, stepwise regression model were implemented in studying factors effecting net income of farmers. The estimates suggested that factors includes organizational forms, participation of technique trainings, annual output of edible mushrooms, sales price and cost for raw materials are the significant ones. On the other hand, using estimates of technical efficiency, variables that have influences on technical efficiency were identified with tobit regression model. Model estimates showed that level of specialization, participation of technique trainings, organizational forms and experience in mushroom cultivation has significant influence on technical efficiency and pure technical efficiency; while level of specialization, participation of technique trainings, organizational forms and age has influence on scale efficiency.On account of analysis about the edible mushroom industry, farmers’ behaviors and performance valuation, it was argued that small-scale farmers will remain the dominant producers of edible mushroom, in that the market size is expanding, farmers enjoy advantages in production cost and flexibility, and enterprises’ development has certain limitations. Finally, in the perspectives of farmers themselves and government, recommendations on how to further optimize the behavior and promote the development of small scale farmers engaging in mushroom production were proposed accordingly.