Performance Evaluation Of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives: A Theory And Empirical Analysis

Over the years, a small-scale pattern has been formed in rural areas because of the household contract responsibility system, and this, to a certain extent, has caused decentralization and non-organization problems with regards to the production and management of peasant households. In a market economy, the decentralization management of peasant households will inevitably leads to "small farmers, big market" contradictions, especially after China's accession to WTO, there are major changes of the market environment of agricultural development, China's agriculture began to face international competition. It's certain in a more competitive disadvantage for these highly decentralized and inorganizable farmers to compete with the advanced and large scaled multinational farmer co-organizations and associations. In this context, many types of Farmer specialized cooperatives emerged across the whole country, which to some extent improved the farmers organization level to go to the market, and played a positive role for promoting rural economic development. However, the development of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives in China is still in its infancy, there are problems for all kinds of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives, including weak organization and foundation, irregular operation, unsound mechanisms etc, which are far from producing the advantages of well organization and institution. The evaluation of the performance of current Farmer Specialized Cooperatives is significant for revealing its development status, characteristics and gaps as well as probing the goals, direction and measures of Farmers Specialized Cooperative under the new circumstances.Performance Evaluation of FSC is a relatively new theoretical research contents, and theorists have not as yet to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis and evaluation. In this present study, on the basis of analysis of the theoretical basis of the performance evaluation on FSC, and development logic of demand occurringâ†'mechanismâ†'function realization of FSC, the performance generated path of FSC is found and further performance structure and evaluation dimensions are concluded. Based on the above analysis, the Performance Evaluation System of FSC is established. This PES contains three levels indicators:two first level, the behavior (process) performance and results performance; seven second level indicators the two-level performance indicators, including resource allocation performance, organization and management performance, service delivery performance, quality control performance, economic performance, social effects performance and main body efficiency; a series of third level indicators. Based field survey data in Shandong, Jiangsu, Hunan and Ningxia provinces, this study conducted a descriptive statistical analysis and theoretical evaluation on the performance of current China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives, and then through the factor analysis of the indicators and data from the given index system, the index system is validated and indicators are empowered. With the application of the established index system, this study conducted the performance evaluation of 28 cooperatives of four provinces and positioned their performance levels and analyzed the problems. Finally, from the standpoint of both the government and organizations, this paper gives measures and suggestions for promoting the further improvement performance of China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives.