Theoretical And Empirical Researches On Farmer Cooperatives Alleviating Poverty

Poverty is a kind of economic and social phenomenon with the development of human society,and reducing poverty is the responsibility of every government and society.In the four decades of reform and opening up,more than 700 million rural poor individuals have shaked off poverty,poverty alleviation in rural areas in China has achieved remarkable accomplishments.However,poverty reduction still faces with grim situation in rural China at present,specifically,the poverty population is still large,the extent of poverty is very deep,the task of poverty alleviation is pressed for time,and the criterion of shaking off poverty is high.Basically,reducing rural poverty thoroughly not only depends on the intervention of outside forces,but also on the endogenous dynamic cultivating in rural areas.Farmer cooperatives came from rural areas,embedded in rural communities,and relates to rural households naturally.They play an irreplaceable role in distinguishing poor individuals,connecting the poor to outside resources,developing agricultural industry and improving poor groups' capability.Besides,as an alliance of vulnerable individuals and characterized with pro-poor features,farmer cooperatives provide a feasible path for poverty alleviation in rural areas in China.Unfortunately,special physical,cultural and institutional environment in poor areas restricts the development of cooperatives,and as a kind of institutional arrangement,the supply of farmer cooperatives have being falling into the "collective action dilemma" over a long period of time.Furthermore,the development of cooperatives departs from the "ideal type" of classical cooperatives,the phenomenon of cooperatives alienating is quite extensive.As a result,the viewpoint that cooperatives contribute to reduce poverty has raised questions of all walks of life,the feasibility of alleviating rural poverty through cooperatives needs to be demonstrated.Based on the background of cooperatives alienating generally,this paper investigates the organizational base,member-base,poverty alleviating mechanism and the performance of cooperatives on poverty reduction.Specifically,this paper answers the questions such as how cooperatives formed,do fanner cooperatives exclude poor individuals,can cooperatives reduce poverty and what the effect of cooperatives on poverty alleviation.Through empirical and case researches,we find that:(1)The variable of "Rural elites" affects the number of farmer cooperatives siginificantly,which means that the rapid emergence of rural elite groups and who engaged in cooperative enterprise are the main reasons of the boom of cooperatives in China.However,the relatively shortage of rural elite resources restricts the development of cooperatives in poor areas.Besides,rural elites setting up cooperatives leads to the heterogeneity of member structure which prompts the alienation of cooperatives.At present,it is quite reasonable that cooperatives mutate generally,the phenomenon of cooperatives alienating might not change for a long period.(2)Whether rural households are qualified to join cooperatives not only depends on their demands to participate in,but also on cooperatives' willingness to recruit against a background of cooperatives alienating.However,two decision makers' focal points are quite different,specifically,rural households hope to improve their weakness,economize transaction costs and avoid risk through joining cooperatives,as a result,the poor with initial specificity investment prefers to join cooperatives.Contrarily,cooperatives favor rural households who are engaged in non-crops production with large scale and initial specificity investment,but not the poor.Since poor individuals are small scale,absent specificity investment and engaged in crops production,they might be excluded by cooperatives.(3)Alienated cooperatives possess the function of poverty reduction as well.However,distinguishing from classical cooperatives,who alleviate poverty through mutal and self-help among vulnerable individuals,alienated cooperatives help the poor by objective and subjective ways,specifically,the former one includes developing agricultural industry in poor area,creating jobs and achieving the value of idle land resources in the process of pursuing organizational performance which may benefit the poor;the latter one is cooperatives taking pertinence measures to help poor individuals intentionally.Certainly,alienated cooperatives would not help poor groups proactively,promoting personal reputation of the heads of cooperatives,striving for governments,policy resources and "identity resources" attached to the poor are the motivations of cooperatives to help poor groups intentionally.(4)Although cooperatives mutate quite generally,participating in cooperatives helps to reduce poverty and increase income significantly.However,the positive effect on members' income is more obvious for high-income rural households.The evidence from 162 villages reveals that forming cooperative in villages can increase villagers' income as well,but the effect is quite small,the growth of every percentage point in the coverage just bring about nearly half percentage point growth in rural individuals' income.Besides,cooperatives excluding the poor individuals makes the effect of cooperatives on poverty reduction insignificant.According to the results,this paper proposes that we should confront the background and logic of the alienation of farmer cooperatives.In order to play the role of cooperatives on poverty reduction to the most extent,the governments should cover the shortage of rural elite resources through introducing rural elites outside,helping cooperatives to develop their capacity and supporting cooperatives precisely so as to guiding cooperatives to recruit poor individuals.Based on the facts that farmer cooperatives mutating generally,this research investigates the logic and mechanism of cooperatives on poverty reduction,the results are not only valuable to guide the practice of cooperatives to reduce rural poverty in China,but also help to enrich the theory about cooperatives alleviating poverty.Compared with the previous studies,the contributions of this research are:(1)The innovation of the research perspectives.This paper investigates the mechanism of rural household participating in cooperatives from households' and cooperatives'perspectives,which remedies the defects of previous studies which researched just from rural households' perspective.Besides,when investigating the effect of cooperatives on poverty reduction and income increasing,this study not only considers the direct effect on member households,but also takes the overflow effect on non-members' in consideration,which avoids underestimating the influence of cooperati'ves on income increasing and poverty reduction;(2)The innovation of the research methods.This study identifies the complete information on cooperatives'willingness to recruit based on rural household survey data by using a special questionnaire and identification processes,which may serve as reference and guidance for the future researches.In addition,compared to univariate probit model,bivariabte probit model engaged in this paper is more suitable to explain the mechanism of rural households participating in cooperatives.Furthermore,using quantile regression model to assess the influence of cooperatives provides empirical evidence of pro-poor feature of cooperatives.