Ling Qiu

Organic fertilizers can be crucial in promoting sustainable agricultural development, but they are not used in a wide-ranging way among smallholder farmers in many developing countries. In China, cooperatives are considered essential subjects of agricultural technical training, but it is more common to join cooperatives without participating in their technical training. Thus, joining cooperatives or not cannot simply be used to assess the role of cooperatives in influencing the farmers’ production behavior. Based on survey data of 1160 citrus farmers in Sichuan Province, China, this study estimated the effect of the technical training provided by agricultural cooperatives on farmers’ adoption of organic fertilizers, taking into account the farmers’ ability and perception as the mediation variables. The findings showed that participating in the technical training provided by agricultural cooperatives could significantly enhance the likelihood that farmers will adopt organic fertilizers. The impact was 81.6% in influencing the farmer’s abilities and 7.64% in their perceptions of organic fertilizers. Furthermore, other variables, such as farm sizes, land transfers, and education levels, also make a difference in the effectiveness of the agricultural cooperatives’ technical training. This study provides support for developing pertinent policies to promote the complete adoption of agricultural cooperatives’ technical training functions and the widespread use of organic fertilizers.

Agricultural cooperatives are effective facilitators of green production technology promotion. What is the role of social capital within agricultural cooperatives with the most competitive advantage in technology promotion? Using the survey data of 465 citrus-planting cooperative members in Sichuan Province, this study uses the IV-probit model and mediating effect model to analyze the impact role of social capital within agricultural cooperatives on its members’ adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) technology. The bootstrap method is also used to test the robustness of the parameter estimates. The results show that: (1) the social capital within agricultural cooperatives has a significant positive impact on IPM adoption; (2) cooperative members’ IPM cognition has a partial mediating effect on the impact of the social capital within agricultural cooperatives on its members’ adoption of IPM technology (more than 51.37%). Therefore, among all the optional IPM technology promotion measures of cooperatives, multi-dimensional accumulation of the social capital within agricultural cooperatives and promotion of IPM technology awareness level of members is a viable path.

The issue of environmental pollution caused by traditional agricultural production operations is becoming increasingly serious. Farmers are the direct actors of production, and their willingness to green production deserves the greatest attention. Technical training conducted by farmers’ cooperatives worldwide in recent years appears to have changed farmers’ willingness to adopt green production technologies, but there is a lack of empirical testing of the impact mechanisms. Therefore, based on a sample of 1147 members of China’s citrus production cooperatives, we theoretically and empirically explored the impact of this; the mechanism of the effect was analyzed through the endogeneity treatment and robustness test of farmers’ value perception, as well as the instrumental variable method (IV-Oprobit). The results showed that farmers’ overall willingness to adopt green production technologies was low, and increasing the number of training sessions in farmers cooperatives could significantly enhance their willingness. Specifically, the probability of members being “very willing” to adopt technologies increased by 3.2% for each additional training session in cooperatives. Additionally, cooperative training can significantly improve members’ technology applicability and benefit–cost perceptions of green production technologies, thus enhancing their willingness to adopt; both types of value perceptions are important transmission mediators of this effect, and the mediation effects account for 5.98 and 14.53% of the total effect, respectively. Other than that, the results of the heterogeneity analysis showed that the effect of cooperative training on the willingness to adopt them was positively significant regardless of small-, medium- or large-scale members, with the most significant effect on small-scale farmers. This study provides a better understanding of the impact of technical training of cooperatives on farmers’ willingness, contributes to the enrichment of value perception theory, and provides a basis for formulating relevant policies to encourage cooperatives to perform their training function and promote green production in agriculture.