Governance Study On Quality And Safety Of Agricultural Products

The study of quality and safety of agricultural products is based on its significance and seriousnes. For in recent years, frequent outbreaks of food safety incidents are found its roots in primary agricultural products. Concensus has been achieved between government and academia in govenance on quality and safety of agricultural goods.However, literature review are found that:(1) Research on the quality and safety of primary agricultural is not enough, compared with the research in food safety; (2) less attention has been given the the self-enforcing mechanism of agricultual contracts compared with the research from aspects of opportunism, asymmetric information, rational behavior of producers; (3) Less attention has been given to the government regulatory power as a force to better self-enforcing mechanism of agricultural contract; (4) Less attention has been given to the reseach of relevant actors including producers、 consumer government under a wholly analytical framework.Based on this, this paper attempts to establish a"Environment-Behavior Performance" analytical framework, starting from the characteristics of agricultural products, to the selection of governance model for agricultural products quality and safety. Under market failuer, the paper explores contractual governance and government for quality and safety of agricultural products. The main contents include the following aspects:First, agricultural characteristics factors lead to the need for different governance model from the control of the quality of industrial products. (1)In weak position of the value chain determined by the agricultural industry characteristics, makes Producers (farmers) as a price taker. It drives the producer to have "potential" opportunist motives, by reducing the quality and safety of agricultural products level to obtain greater profit margins; (2)Agricultural production characteristics decide the uncertainty of the quality and safety of agricultural products, which increases the cost of quality control of agricultural producers and enhances opportunistic behavior of farmers. (3)Measurement characteristics determine the high cost of the measurement of the quality and safety of and unwillingness of comsumer to abtain and share of the information of quality and safety, when no incentive for producers to share quality information, market failure occurs.Secondly, the incompleteness of agricultural contract weenkens the role of formal contract, hence promotes the need for informal contractual governance-relational contract in governace effection. Relational contracts function in two channes:interest-oriented mechanism and relation-oriented mechanism to guarantee self-enforcement of agricultural contracts, reducing the opportunistic behavior of agricultural producers, and to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products.Thirdly, the role of government regulation on contractual governance functions through the establishment of the authority of regulatory body, improvement of laws and regulations, strengthening enforcement, and improvement of information systems, aiming to shape "strong regulation" types for government, which will reduce producer opportunistic motives by reputation menachism.