Empirical Study On The Management Behavior Of High-value Agricultural Products Farmer Household

As the agricultural marketization has been deeply reformed and people's food consumption structure has changed a lot,China's agricultural industry has also experienced the marketization and structure transformation,which brings lots of opportunities as well as challenges for Chinese farmers who are engaged in high-value labor-intensive agricultural production.Some farmers are gradually turning into operating the professional high-value agricultural production,and have become the main body of the market.However,when the small scattered farmers are involved in the market transactions,it would be inevitably that there is a huge contradiction between small farmers and large markets,and their weak resistance to market risk and other issues.Although there are a large number of literatures studying on farmer household behavior,however,most of them focus on the behavior of grain farmer.Domestic research in this area is lack of attention on the behavior of high-value agricultural production farmers.This dissertation takes the watermelon farmers in the major watermelon producing area as a main research objective.With the help of a set of survey data from watermelon farmers in Hubei,Shandong,Henan Province in China,both empirical analysis such as econometric approach and normative analysis are adopted to deeply study the farmers' operating behavioral characters and influencing factors in different scale of operation,different region and different planting model.The key aspects of agricultural operating process are mainly studied in this dissertation including the planting decision-making behavior,farmers' production technology efficiency,sales behavior in the period of pre-production,mid-production,post-production respectively and also the risk perception and evasion behavior throughout the producing process.It is expected that this study could provide the farmers with theoretical and practical basis to guide them increase their producing efficiency in high-value agricultural products area.In addition,it would also help them enhance their adaptability and competitiveness in the market.The main contents and conclusions of this dissertation are listed as follows:Chapter 4 is a general analysis on the farmers' planting willingness on high-value agricultural products and its influencing factors.The results show that:(1)farmers' watermelon production behavior is a market-oriented commodity production and management behavior.Nowadays,the main problem that farmers have faced is the lack of labor,while the other problems contain deterioration of comparative efficiency,technical constraints,market prices fluctuation and so on;(2)Farmers' planting decision-making behaviors on high-value agricultural products largely rest with their risk attitudes.Farmers' willingness to plant high-value agricultural products have been positively affected by the householder's education level,family size,the share of watermelon income in the total family income,the technical training experience,the market causes and so on.However,the planting area amount in previous season and the householder's age have obviously negative influences on the farmers' willingness to expand the planting scale of high-value agricultural products.Chapter 5 is about the farmer households' production technical efficiency and its influencing factors of the high-value agricultural products.The results indicate that,(1)there is an “inverted U” effect relationship between the scale of operation and farmer households' production technical efficiency.Farmers with a mid-size operating scale have a relatively larger technical efficiency than the small-size and large-size farmers.The farmer households' average production technical efficiency is about 80.3%.(2)Among the three groups of samples,the educational level,cultivation experiences and laborer numbers have a significant positive influence on the farmer households' production technical efficiency.However,the proportion of watermelon operating area in the whole household operating area has a significant negative effect on farmers' production technology efficiency.(3)Different cropping patterns will result in significantly different technical efficiency.For example,the greenhouse cultivation model always has an obvious higher producing efficiency than the open field cultivation.The cropping patterns under greenhouse cultivation have a significantly positive effect on improving the technical efficiency of medium-scale sample farmers.,Similarly,compared with a single cropping pattern,the intercropping pattern is benefit to the technical efficiency of large-scale group of watermelon farmers.Chapter 6 is an analysis of farmers' sales behavior and its influencing factors in high-value agricultural products.The main conclusions are:(1)there are significant differences on the watermelon sales information acquiring methods and sales behavior among different regions.The improvement of the specialization and agglomeration degree of the high-value agricultural products can help to increase the sales information quality and maintain the stability of the sales channels.It is also benefit to reduce the transaction cost such as the sales market information seeking and identifying.(2)The main sales channels are different from the sales scales and regions.The small-size farmer households are more inclined to choose the “farmers' market” which is a direct circulation model,while the large-size farmer households are prone to sale from the intermediary such as the brokers and dealers.Generally speaking,the higher the specialization and marketing degree reaching,the more stabilized and concentrated of the farmer households' sales channels would be.The improvement of cropping specialization degree and the expansion of production scale will make the agricultural products sales methods change from the pure marketing transaction into the market collaboration model.(3)The influence of transaction cost on famers' sale behaviors largely varies with crops scales.Reducing transaction cost can increase the marketing participation opportunities for farmers.Chapter 7 gives an analysis of risk perception and avoidance behavior of the farmers who are engaged in high-value agricultural products.The conclusions are listed as follows:(1)the market risk is the main risk source for the operation of the high-value agricultural products.Farmers of different sizes agree on the main sources of watermelon production risk and market risk.Farmers from different regions have different opinions on their risk perception of watermelon production and management.Farmers are facing higher production and management risks in areas where the planting is more dispersed and the industry agglomeration is lower.Farmers in the area where the specialization and agglomeration degree are higher will experience a lower market price fluctuation risk.In addition,the cultivated mode has a significant impact on the farmers' market price fluctuation risk,and the farmers who plant watermelon in greenhouse are facing higher market price fluctuation risk.(2)Farmers are generally inclined to improve their own management ability as the main risk preventing strategy.Farmers have a strong demand for weakening agricultural production and management risks by using external resources.However,external forces have a weak effect on helping farmers to avoid risks.The larger-scale of the farmers has more strong willingness to avoid risk by improving the degree of organization and professional management.Smaller farmers tend to reduce the risk of production and management through diversified cultivation.Farmers who plant watermelon in open field are more inclined to choose market management strategies,and the farmers who plant watermelon in greenhouse are more likely to choose output risk management strategiesBased on the above conclusions,some policy suggestions can be given as follows:(1)value the investment on farmers' human capital and improve the farmers' quality through multiple channels,(2)cultivate and perfect the multi-level agricultural market service organization,(3)strengthen the rural information construction and infrastructure investment,(4)improve the agricultural insurance system and innovate the supply of agricultural insurance,(5)well plan and guide the farmers put their high-value agricultural products to the superior areas.The contribution and innovation of this dissertation mainly contain two aspects as follows,(1)based on a large amount of survey data on farmer households,this dissertation chooses the watermelon farmers who are significantly market-oriented and specialized as a specific research objective.It has largely make up for the limitations that when the rice,corn and other grain crops,the apple,orange and other perennial horticultural crops were chosen as the studying objective in the past.This dissertation enriches the difference research on farmers' behavior,and also plays an important role on supplying and deepening farmers' behavioral theory.(2)The research contents include the behavior analysis of the key aspects in the whole process of the farmers' production and management.Also,comparative analysis is carried out from different scales,different regions and different planting patterns.This multi-angle and multi-level analysis makes the study in the characteristics and laws of farmers' production and management behavior being more profound and rich.As a result,the proposed policy recommendations are more targeted and adaptive.