Research On Service Functions Of Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives From The Perspective Of Food Safety

In recent years, although the level of food safety in our country has been improved significantly, food safety standard is still unable to meet the requirement domestic and foreign markets. Farmers’ professional cooperative is considered to be an effective organization which can promote agricultural development, improve agricultural income and the level of food safety. However, with the rapid development of cooperation organization, the problems in the cooperatives come up. It has been an urgent problem that how to improve the service function of farmers’ professional co-operative in the field of ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products.Based on field investigation of farmers’ professional cooperative in Hubei, Shandong,Zhejiang and other provinces, this paper researches the in a food safety standpoint. From theoretical analysis, the paper takes institutional change, transaction cost theory and principal-agent theory as base theories. From the practical point of view and empirical analysis, the service function of farmers’ professional cooperative has been divided into four parts: technical training, production goods, production supervision, logistics distribution. Organized potential benefits, cooperative establishing ways, management capacity, production cluster, market conditions, product information are selected as six influence factors. An empirical analysis model is established, correlation analysis and Ordered Probit regression analysis method are applied to analysis the relationship of farmers’ professional cooperative service functions and influence factors.The main results are shown below:First, annual technical training times, products market brands have a significant impact on the service function of farmers’ professional co-operative at 1% statistically significant level; to increase training numbers about agricultural planting technology for famers, and to build agricultural products brand are of great importance.Second, the number of professional personnel, support from governments have a significant impact on the service function of farmers’ professional co-operative at 5%statistically significant level; to improve the overall literacy of leaders and members,increase government investment should be emphasized.Third, the education level of leaders, and the quality certification of agricultural products have a significant impact on the service function of farmers’ professional co-operative at 10% statistically significant level; food safety quality certification systemplays a role of standardizing producers’ behavior and closing loopholes in supervision,cooperatives should strengthen the service of agricultural products quality certification system, and encourage members on standard manufacturing.Fourth, factors including products characteristics, leaders’ working experience, the scale of farming per household, grading and packaging, the rank of farmers’ professional cooperative, the distance between a farmers’ professional cooperative and agricultural wholesale market don’t have a significant impact on the service function; the effect of these factors are open to speculation.