Farmers’ Endowments, Behavioral Targets And Quality Control Behavior Of Agricultural Products-Positive Research On The Farmer Survey In Guangdong

Food quality has become an outstanding issue in China, food quality or safety incidents happened constantly lead consumers to a widespread distrust of the quality of agricultural products. As the agricultural product is a typical experience product, market regulation and supervision system is insufficient, illegal cost is low and producers iswidely lack of self-discipline, all that makes it hard to guarantee the safety of agricultural products.Agricultural products is mainly supplied by rural household, suppliers’ behavior deviation will cause quality problem of product, so it is very importantto strengthen farmers’ quality control behavior of agricultural products. However, excessive pesticide residues seriously affects the safety of agricultural products, it is necessary for promoting the quality and safety of agricultural products to regulatepesticides application behavior of farmer.Studying on the internal mechanism of the quality control behavior ofpeasants should be set from farmers themselves. In China, there is more people and less land, and exist the rural household contract management system, the existing rural land circulation is difficult to expandthe scale of agricultural operation. As a large number of rural young labors moving into industry, rural labor force showed a trend of aging problem, whereas human capital heterogeneity lead to differences in agricultural and non-agricultural income. Farmers’ endowments affects agricultural investment from three aspects of people, land and money, hence peasants’ quality control behavior are constrained by farmers’ endowments. Based on somebehavior theory, individual intention significantly affect behavior. Our concern is that different endowment farmers have different goals, and whether different target preferences significantly affect the choice of the farmer quality control behavior.In addition, considering the different uses of agricultural products, farmers’ endowment, behavioral targets preference may also have different effects on quality control behavior.From the perspective of micro peasants, refer to the classical theory of farmers’ behavior, bounded rationality and multi-dimension rational,the mechanism of farmers’ quality control behavior of agricultural products is studied in this paper. Based on questionnaire to farmers in Guangdong Province, we systematically describe farmers’ characteristics in Guangdong, from farmers’ endowments including labor endowments, income and its structure, condition of farmland, and from farmers’ behavior targets including cost savings, save force, increase output and improve quality. We also compare the different among farmers’ various behavioral targets and preference, and select the pesticide application behavior of farmer as the index of quality control behavior, finally use binary Logistic regression to analysis the related factors that affect farmer’s quality control behavior. Main conclusions are as follows:(1) Labor endowments, rural household’s income and its structure, condition offarmland are the factors that affecting the quality controlbehavior of peasant. We found that, the number of labor force, farmer’s age, thenet income of rural household, the scale of farmland, are all positively correlated to application rates of pesticides, while the number of female farmers, the education levels of peasant, the proportion of non-agricultural income, arenegatively correlated to farmer’s application rates of pesticides.(2)The choice of farmer’s behavior targets has diversity in Guangdong Province.Most of peasants is prefer to promote theoutput of production. Moreover, farmer’s behavior target preference affects farmer’s quality control behavior, the preference to save costs and to increase production are significantly positively correlated to quality controlbehavior of farmers, but the preference to save force and improve the quality of products is not significant.In addition, in view of the different use of agricultural products, there is a difference among each behavior target preferencein the effect of quality control behavior.According to the aboveresearch results, we also have put forward a series of suggestions to ensure quality of agricultural products.First of all, farmer’s age, education level, farmer’s income and its structure, scale of farmland, are key factors affecting farmer’s quality control behavior.Government and organizations need to popularize advanced technology and production pattern, to encourage young group, the specialized farmers managing farm business, also to strengthen the farmers’ agricultural skills and education level, to increase non-agricultural income of peasant. Secondly, empirical analysis shows that the diversity of peasant’s behavior target in Guangdong, and most of farmers prefer to increase output of products, there also exist differences upon quality control behavioramong each behavior target.Finally, when agricultural products being sold, farmer’s pursuing target that improving quality of agricultural products does not make him less use pesticides. Besides encouragingpeasants transfer from the simple pursuit of production to concernboth with quantity and quality of product, we still need to enhance management and supervision in supply chain of agricultural products combined with consumers and regulators, thus effectively guarantee the quality and safety of agricultural products.