An Empirical Analysis On The Behavior Of Farmer Participating In Professional Cooperatives

Farmer cooperatives connect small farmers and big markets like a bridge, which is important to raise farmer systematize degree and farmers’income. Before production, cooperatives provide production material to farmers. During production, technical guidance and consulting are provided. At last, cooperatives offer market information and buy some products from farmers, which reduce the production risk, save the cost of production, improve product quality and increase farmers’income. After the" Chinese Farmer Specialized Cooperatives Law" implemented in the July1,2007, the external environment for the development of the professional cooperatives is constantly improved, and so is the development speed. However, till now the farmers’participation rate of cooperatives is not high in our country, the ability that drive farmers is not strong, which seriously restrict the further development of our country’s cooperatives. Therefore, studying the factors that influence farmers’ participation of cooperatives and analyze the reasons for low rate of farmers’participation, which have important meaning to improve the farmer participation rate of cooperatives and promote cooperatives to develop healthy and rapidly.Firstly, this paper divides the sample households into small and large scale according to the planting area, and empirically analyses the economic effect of small-scale farmers and large-scale farmers which take part in cooperatives through the linear regression model by introducing the time variable T; Based on the analysis of economic effect, the paper empirically analyzes other factors which influence farmers participate in cooperatives or not by using logistic model; Finally, the paper analyzes the reasons that farmers do not participate in cooperatives through the statistical analysis. The results show us that cooperation can increase the income of members compared with nonmembers. For members and nonmembers of the small scale farmers, if not control the time variables, income of members was higher than that of nonmembers, if control time variables and difference effect, the income between members and nonmembers was not significantly different; For members and nonmembers of the large-scale farmers, if not control the time variables, the income between members and nonmembers was not significantly different, if control time variables and difference effect, income of members was higher than that of nonmembers. Though cooperatives can increase farmers’ income, there are still many factors influencing farmers to participate in the cooperative, like farmer home stay time, a loan, the attitude to people’s commune, difference between new and old cooperative community, the number of surrounding farmers which take part in cooperatives, planting area, watermelon planting experience, new technology adoption and whether or not to enter the cooperatives has positive effect. In addition, through analyzing the reasons, we also found farmers do not participate in the cooperation because of the farmers’ own unwillingness and cooperatives’ restriction.Based on the empirical analysis, there are some policy suggestions to improve the farmers’ participation rates of cooperatives. Firstly, standardize and improve the development of cooperatives so they can increase farmers’ income; secondly, through propaganda and demonstration, raise the rate of farmers which enter in cooperative; finally, it should speed up the land circulation with law, and realize the scale operation of farmers.