Distribution, characteristics and factors influencing establishment of demonstration farmers’ cooperatives in China

Abstract

Development of farmers’ cooperatives is vital for agricultural development in China.The demonstration farmer cooperatives represent the level of economic development hence integration of farmer cooperatives will have a positive impact on agricultural economy. Taking the first batch of national demonstration farmers’ cooperatives as the research object and investigating the regional, sectorial; and industrial distribution patterns, the main influencing factors were analyzed by the least square method in order to study the distribution characteristics. Looking at the cross section among different enterprises in agriculture, highest number of farmer cooperatives belongs to crop sector followed by livestock, agricultural machinery, fishing and forestry. Among the demonstration cooperatives in crop production, highest number of farmer cooperatives’ can be seen in vegetable sector. The grain sector has the lowest number of demonstration cooperatives. Regional distribution shows that farmer cooperatives in livestock sector are more concentrated in the country’s western region. According to the regression analysis factors such as number of rural population, per capita crop sown area and urban agricultural employment showed significant effect on development of farmer cooperatives. The urbanization to promote farmer per capita planting area has expanded as a result of the development of demonstration farmers’ cooperatives. Also an increase of urban agricultural employment and development of demonstration farmers’ cooperatives showed an inverse relationship.