Social Function Of Farmer Professional Cooperatives In China

"Agriculture,rural areas and farmers" issues are the potential and bedrock of China’s economic and social development,and farmers’ professional cooperatives are an important carrier to solve farmers’ problems.No.1 central document has given huge attention,Local governments have also introduced policies to support local conditions.Farmers’ professional cooperatives play an important role in consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and implementing rural revitalization.At present,research on the performance of farmers’ cooperatives in China is mostly focused on economic benefits,such as reducing poverty and increasing income.However,as a third sector independent of the public sector and private enterprises,cooperatives also have social influence and strong positive externality.Therefore,based on the 1007 samples obtained from the household survey in Tanchang County,Gansu Province,this paper makes exploring research on the social functions of farmers’ cooperatives.Firstly,this paper reviews the relevant research of cooperatives.Starting from the origin of cooperatives,this paper systematically reviews the cooperative theories at home and abroad,including the world-famous Rochdale principle,Marxist Leninist cooperative theory and cooperative theory from the perspective of new institutional economics since the 20 th century.China’s farmers’ cooperatives have developed rapidly after legislation,and the relevant research results are constantly enriched,mainly focusing on three aspects: factors affecting farmers’ willingness to join cooperatives,the problems existing in the development process of cooperatives and the performance of cooperatives.Among them,the research on cooperative performance and its influencing factors is relatively sufficient and perfect.Therefore,this paper also summarizes the research on cooperative performance from the perspectives of economic function and social function.Cooperatives can reduce poverty and increase income,but the effect of increasing income depends on the heterogeneity of members and the structural arrangement within cooperatives.In terms of social functions,cooperatives have a positive social impact,such as promoting the popularization of agricultural technology,improving farmers’ public awareness,enhancing social communication and trust,and increasing employment.This paper puts forward two hypotheses that farmers’ cooperatives can promote the level of government trust and promote the effect of agricultural technology extension,and makes assumptions about its influence path.Firstly,a benchmark regression model is established,which takes whether farmers’ families join cooperatives as independent variables,government trust and the adoption of new agricultural technologies as dependent variables.It is found that the results are significant.In order to solve self-selection problem,the Propensity Score Matching method is used to estimate again.It is found that gender,years of education,whether to file or not,poor households and household per capita annual income will affect farmers’ decision to join cooperatives significantly.Using three matching methods to cross verify,it is proved that joining cooperatives has no significant impact on the trust of village level government,but it can significantly promote the trust level of town government and agricultural technology extension.In addition,after considering the missing variables,the result is still significant Similarly,PSM verifies the impact mechanism of the social function of cooperatives,and finally comes to the conclusion of this paper: joining cooperatives can promote farmers to participate in training projects,so as to increase farmers’ information and resources and make them more willing to accept new agricultural technologies;The essential requirements of democracy and cooperation of cooperatives cultivate the public spirit of farmers.It promotes farmers’ participation in public affairs,and then enhances farmers’ trust in superior government departments.The data of this paper comes from a survey of Rural Revitalization base of Central University of Finance and Economics in Tanchang County,Gansu Province in 2021.The data is true and reliable,with high integrity and quality.Tanchang county was once a national key poverty alleviation county.In the poverty alleviation work,the local county government and all townships and towns explored an innovative model of using cooperatives to drive poor households and cooperating with agricultural enterprises to extend the industrial chain,realizing the "hematopoietic" poverty alleviation,which is of certain typical significance.The control variables selected in this paper include two aspects: farmers’ personal characteristics and family characteristics.The number of cooperative members and non-members in the sample is similar,which is helpful for subsequent empirical research.Finally,according to the results of literature research,theoretical analysis and empirical research,this paper puts forward four policy suggestions for the government: First,shifting the focus of policy from financial support to strengthening the institutional construction of farmers’ cooperatives.Pay attention to the cultivation of their spirit of democratic participation and cooperation.Second,actively providing training services and information for farmers’ cooperatives,which is a good way to improve farmers’ human capital.Third,take farmers’ cooperatives as an important way to implement government policies and carry out policy publicity and promotion.Fourth,create a good external business environment,including fair competition market environment and financial support channels,to facilitate the development of farmers’ cooperatives.