An Analysis On The Influencing Factors Of Farmer Participating In Professional Cooperatives

The farmers' specialized cooperative,which refers to the mutual beneficial economic organization,can be regarded as a bridge connecting small individual farmer and market.It is established based on the principle of voluntary,mutually benefit,equality and the reciprocity.The farmers' cooperative plays a role in the whole process of agricultural production,including the preparatory work,the production and the post harvest.For example,the farmers' cooperative can provide the product materials before production,the training of productive technology during production,and other services for agricultural production,such as sale,transportation,storage,processing and so on.These all-round and all-weather services can greatly improve the efficiency of agricultural production and the sale.Meanwhile,it also plays an important role in reducing the risk of agricultural management,stabilizing the market price,improving the products' quality and increasing farmers' income.Currently,there have been more than one million farmers' cooperatives across China.Some common problems,however,are found in those cooperatives,which includes non-standard of the systems,small scales of the cooperatives,and the relatively low participation rate.Based on the literature review,we found that previous studies on cooperatives can be classified into two categories.Regarding with the system,the current situation and existing problems of the cooperatives,some studies were conducted at the theoretical level.The other category of the studies was focus more on the intention or behavior of farmers'participation in the cooperatives at the empirical level.In the previous studies,we found that the farmers were simply divided into two types:"whether farmers will participate in"or "whether farmers want to participate in".Different from the division method proposed in previous studies,the reality is that the choice between join the cooperatives or not is dependent not only on the willingness of farmers themselves,but also on the qualification as well as the scale of the cooperative.With consideration of the reality,this thesis subdivided the non-members into two types:the self-determinative non-members and the forced-selective non-members.The logit model was further established and applied to analyze the factors affecting the decision of two different kinds of non-members whether they will join the cooperative based on the analysis of cooperative's economic effects.The results indicates that a lot of factors,including risk preference,the planting experience,the number of agricultural labors,the distance to the market,the number of neighbors joining the cooperatives,have a significant impact on the choice of the self-determinative non-members.At the same time,the households with less planting experience,lower income(generally smaller planting area),few neighbors joining the cooperatives,are more likely to become the forced-selective non-members.It is also found that there is a contradiction between the requirements of cooperatives and farmers' own intention.The results of the regressions at different scales indicate that the factors influenced farmers with different planting scales on participating into cooperatives are different.The farmers with strong risk reference,much plating experience and small and medium planting scale are more autonomous.While the effect of plating experience and risk reference on the fanners with large planting scale is not significant.For the farmers with small and medium planting scale,the cooperative is focus on income and the distance to the market.It is indicated by the rejection of the small and medium sized planting farmers with low-income and short distance to the market.But for the farmers with large planting scale,the cooperative is focus on planting experience.Through interviews found that there are many problems in the cooperatives,including the lack of capital and talent,concentration of power,which weaken its appeal to farmers and its ability to accept farmers.The person in charge reflected that the cooperatives tend to recruit the farmers with higher degree of culture,low age,more planting experience,larger scale,centralized residence,which explains the reasons affecting farmers' engagement of cooperatives.Based on the above analysis,the following recommendations were proposed.First of all,in order to improve the attractiveness of cooperatives,we should strengthen the following measurements;support of the capital and technology,advertisement of the cooperatives,standardization of the distribution system of the interests,reduction of the farmers' prejudice on the cooperatives.Secondly,we should further promote the process of the land's circulation,increase funding to support rural education,encourage the small-scale farmers to circulate into land,to enhance the resources of these households(e.g.,culture degree,land area).Finally,we need to reasonably plan the location and quantity of the farmers' cooperatives,as well as to standardize the development of cooperatives,in order to ensure the optimal allocation and quantity of the cooperatives and make sure that more farmers can benefit from the cooperatives' development.