The Market Behavior In Farmer Household Of Different Management Scale

As the expanding market and the increasing opening-up of agricultural product trade is bringing about the marketization and structural adjustification into China's agricultural production, they bring also opportunity and challenge to Chinese farmers engaged in high-value labor-intensive agricultural production. These farmers is on the way of professional production, participating as the mainbody in market management, accordingly their economic activities and products are to be involved in market transaction. Hence, the market behavior of Chinese farmers is vital not only to their competitiveness as individual in market but the competitiveness of Chinese agricultural product in international market as a whole. Current study on farmer households'behavior is too general and fails to dig deep into this problem by focusing on one certain type of agricultural industry. This dissertation aims to solve this problem. Using Tanslog Stochastic Frontier Production Function Model and a large set of first-hand household-level survey data from apple growers in Shaanxi Province, this dissertation makes an indepth study of the characteristics of basic market behaviors such as production, marketing, consumption and circulation of different farmer size and their influencing factors, in an attempt to explore the restrictions that each is faced with and enhance the productivity of farmer households and their competitveness in global market.This dissertation consists of eight chapters, the main content of each chapter is as follows:Chapter 1 briefly introduces the main purpose, the theoretical basis, the main research method and the framework. It elabotates the research background, the purpose and the significance of a study on farmer households'market behavior with a brief view of a changing domestic and international market after China's accession into WTO and the comparative advantage of farmers engaging in labor-intensive agricultural products; then it makes a thorough and objective review of studies in this area at home and abroad and specifies the necessisty of a quantitative study on farmer-household's behavior characteristics focusing on a specific type of agiculture industry; then it summarise the method and the data, and finally it mentions the possible originality of this study.Chapter 2 is a general analysis of farmer household's market behavior. This chapter firstly gives definitions on terms like high-value agricultural product, labor-intensive agricultural product, farmer household's productive marketization and specialization from international trade perspective combining with the facts of farmer household's productive marketization and specialization in china; secondly, it constructs a tentative analysis framework including producer-consumer, production technical efficiency, risk preference, transaction cost, circulation, specialized organization and points out which aspects should be emphasized in a study on farmer households'market behavior like producing, consuming, marketing, circulation. Finally, it explains the reason of choosing farmer household of different size as the analysis basis of this study and provides a definition on farmer household market behavior.Chapter 3 is about the production technical efficiency and technical choice behavior of different farmer size. This chapter mainly analysizes farmer household's production behavior from the aspects of technical relation, productive function and technical choice. Using Tanslog Stochastic Frontier Production Function Model and a large set of first-hand household-level survey data from fruit growers in Shaanxi Province, this chapter makes an attempt at both theoretical and empirical analysis of the production technical efficiency of different farmer size and its influencing factors. The conclusion are: firstly, management size and farmer households'production technical efficiency displays an inverted"U"tendency, that means, medium-sized farmer households have a higher production efficiency than both small-sized and large-sized, and have a bigger room for technical efficiency enhancement; technical efficiency loss shows that regardless of farm size, human resources investment like education, technical training, the extension and popularization of sci-tech information have a marked positive effect on the production efficiency of farmer households, while non-farm management, arable land subtraction and credit availability a negative effect, beaides other factors like family size, age and agro-cooperatives do not show a marked effect. Secondly, concerning technical choice behavior and demand preference feature, there is a high relativity between choice of technical demand type and production management income and cost of farmer households of different size, and a marked difference is found between small-sized and medium as well as large-sized farmer household in terms of the channels trough which they get agricultural technology.Chapter 4 gives an analysis of risk cognition of different farmer size and their dodging acts. Farmer households engaged in labor-intensive high value agricultural product are faced with various management risks today. Using statistics analysis method like Crosstabs test andχ2 tests and based on first-hand household-level survey data gathered from Shaanxi Province, this chapter mainly studies on origins of farmer households'production and management risks and risk cognition of different farmer size and their dodging acts. The conclusions are: firstly, besides climate, natural disaster and plant diseases, insect pests, the risk for peasants engaged in high-value agro-product production and management lies in two aspects, namely, output risk and market risk. That the non-standard market supply of means of production in rurul area leads to quality problem of agricultural chemical and chemical fertilizer constitutes the main output risk. Market risks are caused mainly by factors like price uncertainty, market information accessibility and marketing circulation channel. Secondly, the tests shows that market risk is more common than output risk in production management and does less influence to large-sized farmer household than smaller ones. Farmer households of different size and characteristics differ in their cognition of output risks and market risks. Thirdly, single farmer household is at passive position when faced with output risk and market risk.Chapter 5 is a general analysis of the marketing behavior of different farmer size and its influencing factors. Based on transaction cost theory and data from Shaanxi Province, choice of marketing channels and access to market information of different farm size are observed and analysized to estimate the relative importance of various transaction costs and farm characteristic variables for the choice of marketing channel. The conclusions are: firstly, with the commercialization and specialization of agricultural production, seperation between marketing of agricultural product and traditional market system magnify participants'transaction cost, thus transaction cost becomes a core variable that affecs the marketing behavior of farmers. Secondly, transaction cost is statistically significant in influencing the marketing behavior of farmer household of different size. Information cost for farmers are relatively high and does not vary greatly across farmers of different size; the influence of negotiation cost on farmers of different size shows a marked difference; the negative impacts of monitoring costs on large-sized farm households are distinctly slighter than that of medium-sized and small-sized; farm households'characteristic variables do not impose significant influence on sales behavior. thirdly, overall inclination on choice of marketing channels reflects that a relatively high restriction is imposed on farmers of high-value agro-products when they are drawn into market transaction, and choice of access to market information by farmer households of different size are highly similar while the reliability of information source shows a marked difference. The paucity of information media avaible in rural area put a restriction on the alternatives that famers may employ to gain access to information.Chapter 6 is a theoretical and empirical analysis on farmer households'consumption behavior. This chapter mainly investigates farmer households'consumption behavior characteristics and their demand preference from three levels. Firstly, estimation on micro-characteristics of rural household's consumption behavior is made by using a two-stage LES-AIDS model and Rural Households'Microdata from Shaanxi Province in 2005. The results indicate that for commodity groups (food, clothing, fuel, housing, durable consumer goods and other commodities), demand is price-inelastic. Housing, durable consumer goods and other commodities are luxury goods, while clothing and food are necessities. Within the food group, price elasticities range from -0.362 to -0.942. Expenditure elasticities are lower for grains, sugar and vegetables and higher for pork, beef, and poultry. Evidence of household characteristic variables itself having a significant effect on food consumption pattern are also found. Secondly, the analysis on rural households'non-food consumption behavior shows that the guiding effect of market on farmer household's consumption behavior strengthened correspondingly with the number of consumer goods and service that the market can provides to farmers. Thirdly, analysis of consumption behavior of different farmer size in specialized production based on household-level survey data from apple growers in Shaanxi Province reveals a general similarity in their consumption behavior and strong tendency to serve agricultural production.Besides, farmer households in specialized production are faced with the increase of living expenditure and the paucity of rural consumer goods supply.Chapter 7 gives an overview of the influence of intermediary organization on farmers'participation in the couse of agricultural product circulation. The conclusions are: Firstly, agro-cooperatives'influence on farmers'participation in the process of market circulation is largely dependent on whether they can reduce transaction cost and help farmers sell their produce. Secondly, farmer brokers play an important role in the process of the marketing of agricultural products. Thirdly, agricultural product wholesale market has a slight influence on farmers'participation in market since farmers are faced with high cost if they make a direct negotiation on price with intermiediary organization in wholesale market. Fourthly, the effectiveness of"company plus farmer household"pattern in leading farmer households participating in market is significantly influenced by its organizing pattern and contract arrangement institution.Chapter 8 is a summary of the whole paper. It concludes what the author has done in the research, its originality and put forward some policy implications.