Qiao Liang

New agricultural operating entities (NAOEs) are essential agricultural players. With the development of the digital economy in the agricultural sector, both opportunities and challenges may arise for the NAOEs. This study examines the effects of the digital economy on the performance of NAOEs by using a comprehensive dataset containing information on nearly the entire population of family farms, farmer cooperatives and agricultural companies from 2013 to 2020 in China. The mechanisms and inclusiveness of these effects have also been explored. Our results find that the digital economy positively impacts NAOEs' performance in terms of sales revenue and profit. These effects are realised by improving agricultural inputs and market transaction conditions. The effects are more profound for farmer cooperatives, agricultural companies and NAOEs with lower profitability and larger organisation size. The magnitude of the effects is larger for NAOEs located in regions with better topographic, economic conditions and higher digital economy levels. In addition, the synergy between traditional and digital infrastructures can enhance these effects. The conclusion provides insights and guidance for encouraging the high‐quality and inclusive development of NAOEs in the digital age.

Agrifood traceability of farms is extremely difficult owing to the small scale and dispersibility of farms. Fortunately, wholesale markets play an irreplaceable role in agrifood systems and in upstream traceability in many developing countries. This study first explores the mechanism of food safety liabilities related to the adoption of upstream traceability to farms. Then, the effects of public regulation by the government and private regulation by the market platform on wholesale vendors' adoption of traceability are investigated empirically. A unique panel dataset comprising 9287 food safety tests for 396 vendors from a wholesale market is used in the empirical analysis. The results show that vendors behave opportunistically by lowering their level of traceability when they expect a smaller possibility of being sampled. Given the same strength of regulation intensity, the effect of government regulation is larger than that of the market. The experience of failure in recent sampling tests motivates vendors to adopt higher levels of traceability. Recommendations regarding the frequency of food safety sampling tests conducted by the government and wholesale markets are proposed [EconLit Citations: Q18, L53].

Environmentally sustainable agricultural development is an essential part of the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations in 2015. This article systematically reviews studies on the role of farmer cooperatives in promoting environmentally sustainable agricultural development and uses China as a case study to analyze the measures and function mechanisms of farmer cooperatives in promoting the adoption and scaling of sustainable farming practices by farmers. Farmer cooperatives in China influence farmers’ farming practices and benefits by not only serving farmers with various information and technologies but also supervising farmers’ production processes. Nevertheless, farmer cooperatives, both in general and in China in particular, face challenges in effectively promoting the adoption of environmentally sustainable farming practices. A few policy implications are proposed based on these analyses.

Agro-food quality certification has been gaining greater importance, because it contributes to both agricultural sustainability and food quality. However, small-scale farmers in developing countries have difficulties in obtaining certification and the economic benefits acquired from certification are unclear. This paper investigates the effects of agro-food quality certification on the farm performance which is indicated by profit, yield and price. The impacts of agricultural organizations, farmer cooperatives and agricultural companies in particular, on the adoption of certification by farmers are explored. We also investigate the effects of organizations on the farm performance of certified farmers. A dataset of 410 vegetable farmers in China is applied, and the propensity score matching (PSM) method is employed in the empirical analysis to address selection bias and reverse causality. Our study finds that, overall, the adoption of certification does not significantly influence farm performance. Cooperative membership positively influences the adoption of certification and the farm performance of certified farmers, while contract farming does not generate additional benefits for certified farmers.

The relationship between organization size and performance is widely discussed in relation to companies, yet related discussion of farmer cooperatives is limited. This study maps the membership size distribution of farmer cooperatives in China and explores the effects of membership size on the economic performance of cooperatives. A panel dataset of the census of farmer cooperatives in China from 2014 to 2019 is used for the empirical analyses. First, the Pareto indices of farmer cooperatives' size distribution are calculated, and the results feature the dominance of small cooperatives and the underdevelopment of large cooperatives. Second, membership size has a positive effect on the total profit of cooperatives. Third, the impact of membership size on the profit per member displays an inverted “U” pattern, and the optimal membership size is 19 members. These effects are heterogeneous across product categories and cooperative ages. The robustness of the results is confirmed by alternative key explanatory indicators and estimation methods. [EconLit Citations: Q13, L25].

This paper illustrates how supply chain (SC) analytics could provide strategic and operational insights to evaluate the risk-based allocation of regulatory resources in food SCs, for management of food safety and adulteration risks. This paper leverages data on 89,970 tests of aquatic products extracted from a self-constructed data set of 2.6 million food safety tests conducted by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) organizations. The integrated and structured data set is used to conduct innovative analysis that identifies the sources of adulteration risks in China’s food SCs and contrasts them with the current test resource allocations of the CFDA. The analysis highlights multiple strategic insights. Particularly, it suggests potential gaps in the current CFDA testing allocation by SC location, which is heavily focused on retail and supermarkets. Instead, the analysis indicates that high-risk parts of the SC, such as wholesale and wet markets, are undersampled. Additionally, the paper highlights the impact that SC analytics could have on policy-level operational decision making to regulate food SCs and manage food safety. The hope is that the paper will stimulate the interest of academics with expertise in these areas to conduct more work in this important application domain. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management.

Purpose: Food markets are characterized by asymmetric information between suppliers and consumers, which causes inefficiency of market and food safety risks. This paper studies how the food quality and safety information disclosed by the government affects the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) certification decision of meat producers. The heterogeneity of the effects across different regions, provinces with different meat output scales and provinces with different intensities of food safety regulation is evaluated.Design/methodology/approach: This paper applies a unique database comprising information from multiple sources. Food quality and safety information disclosure is indicated by the number of failure records of food sampling inspections by the government in 2015–2018. Fixed-effect model is used in the analyses.Findings: The results demonstrate that food quality and safety information disclosure has a significant effect on the HACCP certification adoption by meat producers. The effect is heterogeneous across geographic regions, i.e. this effect is larger in the east and the middle of China than that in the west and the northeast. The heterogeneity across regions may be caused by the variance in meat output scales and fiscal expenditures on food safety among provinces.Originality/value: This research is one of the preliminary attempts to understand how producers respond in terms of HACCP certification to the amount of food quality and safety information disclosed by the government, based on the case of meat industry in China.

The competitive yardstick role of marketing cooperatives refers to the fact that the presence of cooperatives drives the market towards competitiveness. We conduct an empirical study based on panel data from the hog industry in China to examine the existence of competitive yardstick effect of cooperatives. Data including information regarding hog producer cooperatives, farm gate prices of hogs, and other relevant factors in China's 21 provinces in the years 2009–2012 are used. Various methods, including ordinary least squares regression, random‐effect model, and fixed‐effect model, are adopted to predict the effect of cooperatives development on farm gate prices. The results confirm the role of hog producer cooperatives as the competitive yardstick of markets, that is, a positive effect of strength of cooperatives on the farm gate prices received by hog producers with various production sizes. [EconLit classifications: Q13, L16]