Small U.S. dairy farms: can they compete?

The U.S. dairy industry is undergoing rapid structural change, evolving from a structure including many small farmers in the Upper Midwest and Northeast to one that includes very large farms in new production regions. Small farms are struggling to retain competitiveness via improved management and low‐input systems. Using data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey, we determine the extent of U.S. conventional and pasture‐based milk production during 2003–2007, and estimate net returns, scale efficiency, and technical efficiency associated with the systems across different operation sizes. We compare the financial performance of small conventional and pasture‐based producers with one another and with large‐scale producers. A stochastic production frontier is used to analyze performance over the period for conventional and pasture technologies identified using a binomial logit model. Large conventional farms generally outperformed smaller farms using most economic measures—technical efficiency, various profitability measures, and returns to scale.     

吉林省农民专业合作社的融资问题研究

农民专业合作社在国家政策支持下得到了快速发展,然而资金紧缺成为制约其发展的瓶颈。文章以吉林省农民专业合作社为例对其融资问题展开研究,针对吉林省农民专业合作社的发展现状,从资本构成、债务来源、融资困难程度等3个方面对融资现状进行分析,发现目前吉林省农民合作社债务融资比例较低,且民间融资成为其主要融资来源,多数合作社存在不同程度的融资困难。并选取影响农民专业合作社融资问题的合作社盈利能力、合作社抗风险能力、合作社管理机制、信用状况、涉农金融机构信贷倾向、涉农金融机构创新能力和政府政策等7个变量建立解释结构模型(ISM),最终得出信用状况和金融机构的创新能力是影响合作社融资的根本原因,合作社的盈利能力和涉农金融机构的信贷倾向是表层原因,合作社的抗风险能力、管理机制和政府政策则是通过底层信用状况和涉农金融机构的创新能力传导到表层。针对合作社融资难,该文从合作社、涉农金融机构、当地政府等方面,提出相应对策与建议。     

Spatial allocation and the shadow pricing of product characteristics

The paper considers an industry transforming primary commodities (farm products) into processed commodities (food products). It focuses on the allocation of embedded characteristics (carbohydrate, protein, etc.) both across space and among commodities. The approach generates a spatial competitive market equilibrium of production, consumption, transformation, and trade for both primary and processed commodities, along with the spatial distribution of shadow prices for the product characteristics. The model provides a basis for analyzing the allocation and pricing of agricultural products, food products, and characteristics in spatial markets. The empirical usefulness of the model is illustrated in the context of regional resource allocation in the U.S. dairy sector.     

农民专业合作社信贷难成因及对策研究——以广东省为例

在发展壮大过程中,大多数农民专业合作社会遇到信贷难题。通过对广东省农民专业合作社的调查,得到有效数据,文章从4个方面入手对广东省的农民专业合作社信贷难成因及其对策进行分析。分析结果表明以下几个因素是形成广东省农民专业合作社信贷难的成因:(1)省内农村金融支持与服务供给不足,金融机构的服务产品缺乏多样性;(2)信贷政策与信贷产品无法根据农民专业合作社的特点而随机应变,缺乏创新性产品;(3)政府对农民专业合作社信贷扶持的配套措施落实不到位;(4)农业专业合作社的信用水平有待提升。针对以上引起信贷难的成因,提出应对策略与建议:(1)加强金融支持的供给,优化金融机构服务,保障正规信贷资金到位;(2)针对农民专业合作社的需求层次,创新信贷品种,贴近市场,着力推进农村金融创新与发展;(3)政府部门对农民专业合作社信贷给予充分的支持与鼓励,逐步完善金融支持政策环境;(4)农民专业合作社要主动提升自身水平,增强自身经济实力,提高自身盈利能力,实现可持续发展。     

粮食主产区农业韧性的空间差异及影响因素

目的 提升粮食主产区的农业韧性是保障国家粮食安全的重要基础。方法 文章基于2011—2020年粮食主产区的数据,构建农业韧性综合评价指标体系,运用熵值法对农业韧性进行综合评价,结合Dagum基尼系数及其子群分解法分析农业韧性的空间差异,并使用地理探测器来识别农业韧性的影响因素。结果 （1）从整体来看,粮食主产区农业韧性整体呈上升趋势,各地的农业韧性均得到了较大的提升。（2）从空间差异来看,粮食主产区整体空间差异性较小,农业韧性差距主要来源于区域间的差异。其中,东北地区和各区域的农业韧性差距仍然较大,其余地区间的农业韧性差距在逐渐缩小。（3）从影响因素来看,地区市场规模、创新水平、普惠金融水平是影响农业韧性的重要因素,同时三者的交互作用会增加其对农业韧性的解释力。另外,基础设施水平、产业结构水平、与生态环境建设对农业韧性存在一定影响,地区经济水平对农业韧性的影响较弱。结论 为提升粮食主产区农业韧性,基于异质性特征,应统筹各区协调发展,充分发挥内生动力增强农业韧性。     

Performance Measurement of the Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives: The Gap between Theory and Practice

The performance of agricultural cooperatives depends on their business objectives, which are defined in different ways in the literature. We review the theoretical literature on the performance of agricultural marketing cooperatives. Studies can be divided into two classes, those that assume a single objective and those that assume multiple objectives. This classification integrates three views of the cooperatives: ( a ) vertical integration of firms, ( b ) independent enterprise, and ( c ) coalition of firms. Empirical studies on the financial performance of cooperatives are classified into two categories, studies based on the economic theory of the firm and studies that emphasize accounting techniques. Empirical studies have failed to address the cooperatives' objectives as represented by the theoretical literature on cooperative performance.     

Cooperatives and the Commodity Political Agenda: A Political Economy Approach

Historically, major agricultural cooperatives in Canada have been intimately involved in commodity policy issues. Large cooperatives were created because farmers were upset about the perceived lack of competition in buying farm inputs or selling farm outputs. Often, the resulting cooperative was the organization farmers saw as the logical organization to represent their view of commodity policy or competition policy. As cooperatives grew and diversified, the ability to represent their members coherently across policy issues was hampered. For processing cooperatives in the supply-managed sector, the requirement that the cooperative be the political arm of industry, process product, and provide maximum returns to producer members made for a complicated objective function. This paper focuses on the twin objectives of providing efficient member services and performing political lobbying in a public choice framework. The results are illustrated by the recent history of a supply-managed further-processing cooperative and a diversified grain cooperative.     

基于DEA-Tobit模型的农民专业合作社效率分析——来自新疆生产建设兵团的实证

[目的]通过测度新疆建设生产兵团农民专业合作社效率以及探究其影响因素,以期为兵团合作社的效率改进方向和策略提供理论支撑。[方法]文章基于2019年对兵团408家农民专业合作社的微观调研数据,运用DEA-Tobit方法测度了农民专业合作社的综合效率、纯技术效率和规模效率,并进一步对农民专业合作社综合效率的影响因素进行了分析。[结果]农民专业合作社的综合效率、纯技术效率和规模效率均整体水平偏低,且综合效率水平偏低主要由是纯技术效率偏低导致。合作社规模和合作社等级负向影响合作社的效率,而理事会规模、政府财政资金支持、产业类型等因素正向影响合作社效率。[结论]改善合作社的纯技术效率可有效提升兵团农民专业合作社效率,且农民专业合作社规模、理事会规模、理事长受教育程度、合作社等级、政府财政资金支持、技术培训频率、产业类型等因素均是提高农民专业合作社效率的关键因素。     

Sources of Firm Performance Differences in the US Food Economy

Researchers in economics and strategy have long been interested in understanding the determinants of firm performance. We apply the relatively novel approach of hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) to a large panel of food economy firms to shed new light on the long‐standing debate about the relative importance of industry, corporate parent and business unit effects on firm profits. Our results suggest that business unit and corporate effects are more relevant than industry effects in explaining firm performance differences in the food economy. In addition, we also explore the effect of specific strategic factors on performance within each level of analysis. In particular, we find that business‐segment size, industry barriers to entry, corporate diversification, R&D intensity, capital intensity and resource availability are significant predictor variables that explain firm performance differences. Given the relatively important role of corporate effects and the positive influence of corporate strategic variables on business unit performance, our findings suggest that the environment provided by corporate parents significantly affects business unit profitability. In other words, corporate strategy does matter and thus should continue to draw attention from scholars interested in explaining profitability in the food economy.     

Big is efficient: Evidence from agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, there is a renewed interest in agricultural cooperatives as an institutional tool to improve the welfare of smallholder farmers. One of the pathways through which cooperatives benefit their members is scale economies. However, the establishment of cooperatives in Ethiopia seems to pay little attention to the size of the organizations. This article aims at investigating the effect of size on cost efficiency of agricultural cooperatives. More specifically, the purpose is to examine whether a single cooperative can serve a given number of farmers at a lower cost than two or more smaller cooperatives could. We employ the concept of cost subadditivity to compare the cost efficiency of large versus small cooperatives, and by extension unilateral actions. We estimate a flexible production technology using cross‐sectional cooperative‐level data. Findings show that costs would drop by 78% to 181% if farmers join hands in relatively large rather than small cooperatives.     

Multinationals vs. Cooperatives: The Income and Efficiency Effects of Supply Chain Governance in India

The impact of multinational firms on the domestic agricultural sector in developing countries is controversial, in particular in India. Relying on a unique set of household‐level data from the state of Punjab, we study the biggest dairy company in the world (Nestlé) in India and compare its vertical spillover effects on upstream suppliers to other market channels (informal sector and cooperatives). We find that farmers that supply informal channels are less efficient and earn lower profits per dairy animal than farmers supplying the cooperative and the multinational sector. Furthermore, we find that farmers using the multinational channel are more efficient than farmers in the cooperative channel, but equally profitable. Hence, we do not find that supplying the cooperative channel is more beneficial for local dairy farmers than supplying the multinational channel. Overall, however, dairy productivity and profitability levels are still dramatically low, with substantial scope for dairy development.     

Is the agricultural industry spared from the influence of the Australian carbon tax?

The Australian agricultural sector provides food security for the nation and affects the livelihood of farmers and the development of rural communities. This sector has been uneasy about the Australian carbon tax scheme introduced in July 2012 although the government has exempted the agricultural sector from the scheme. By employing a computable general equilibrium model and an environmentally extended Social Accounting Matrix, this article simulates the effects of different carbon tax policy scenarios. The modeling results show that all agricultural sectors will be affected negatively but to differing degrees. The household compensation policy will improve the performance of the poultry and fishing sectors, while having opposite effects in the other agricultural sectors. The inclusion of the agricultural industry into the carbon tax scheme will lead to a considerable further decrease in output, employment and profitability in the agricultural sector, and a significant further reduction in real GDP, but a much larger emission reduction.     

The Determinants of Firm Profitability Differences in EU Food Processing

This paper decomposes the variance in EU food industry return‐on‐assets into year, country, industry and firm effects using a hierarchical linear model (HLM). The HLM approach accounts for some of the methodological drawbacks of conventional approaches of variance decomposition such as anova and components of variance and additionally allows the estimation of the impact of covariates within each effect level. The results for selected EU countries show that firm effects are far more important than industry structure in determining food industry profitability. In particular, firm size and industry concentration are drivers of profitability while firm risk and age as well as industry growth have a negative influence.     

Efficiency of Cooperatives and Investor Owned Firms Revisited

The objectives of dairy processing cooperatives differ from those of investor‐owned firms (IOFs). However, the literature usually assumes the same performance measures for cooperatives vis‐a‐vis IOFs. This study compares the performance of dairy cooperatives and IOFs in major European dairy producing countries. A traditional input oriented approach is used and two alternative approaches are used to account for the differential objectives of cooperatives. Cooperatives’ performance differs across the two approaches from being outperformed by IOFs using the input oriented approach to outperforming them when using an approach that is more in line with cooperatives’ objectives.     

Regional productivity convergence: An analysis of the pulp and paper industries in U.S., Canada,Finland, and Sweden

In this paper we investigate the presence of productivity convergence in eight regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada over the period of 1971–2005. Expectation of productivity convergence in the pulp and paper industries of Canadian provinces and of the states of its southern neighbour is high since they are trading partners with fairly high level of exchanges in both pulp and paper products. Moreover, they share a common production technology that changed very little over the last century. We supplement the North-American regional data with national data for two Nordic countries, Finland and Sweden, which provides a scope to compare the productivity performances of four leading players in global pulp and paper industry. We find evidence in favour of the catch-up hypothesis among the regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada in our sample. The growth performance is at the advantage of Canadian provinces relative to their U.S. counterparts. The two Nordic countries, that had the lowest productivity levels in 1971, erased most of the gap and in some cases moved ahead of their North-American counterparts.     

农业专业合作社的融资供求衔接问题研究

农业专业合作社融资具有一般企业所不具有的特殊性。论文从理论角度分析了农业合作社融资次序的选择,认为通过正规金融实现合作社融资供求衔接的有效途径。在供求不平衡,传统信贷供给无法满足合作社融资需求的状况下,探索了“公司＋合作社＋农户”、“农业龙头企业＋担保公司＋合作社＋农户”、“政府＋农业生产基地＋农业企业＋合作社＋农户”三种农业产业链融资模式,并分析了其主要特点、优势以及主要风险,为合作社融资提供了新思路。     

合作社类型、治理机制与经营绩效

治理机制是农业产业化经营组织有效运营的关键,其完善程度影响经营绩效。本文基于中国4省(区)7个地级市221家农民合作社的访谈问卷数据,探究以合作社为纽带的产业化经营组织类型、治理机制与经营绩效之间的关系。结果表明:合约治理不仅对合作社经营绩效产生直接的正向影响,还能通过促进关系治理间接提升经营绩效,合约治理与关系治理存在互补而非替代关系;不同类型合作社的合约治理程度存在显著性差异,但关系治理水平较为相似。相较于公司从属型合作社,原生型合作社的合约治理水平较低,公司主导型合作社的合约治理程度较高。因此,合作社需要审视缔结的产业化经营组织特征,妥善运用合约治理与关系治理两类机制,提高合作社经营绩效。     

Profitability of incremental generic promotion of Australian dairy products

The motivation for this study rests on two factors. First, Australian dairy farmers spend around $20 million annually on generic promotion and estimates of the returns from this expenditure are required to facilitate efficient investment decisions. Second, while the Australian dairy industry has been highly regulated, there has been a substantial reduction in assistance over the past decade and farm‐gate milk prices were deregulated on 1 July 2000. The profit potential of promotion may vary with the degree of regulation, so past estimates of the returns from promotion may not hold in the competitive environment of the future. Hence, the aim of this study is to examine the effects of government intervention on the profitability for dairy farmers of incremental changes in generic dairy promotion expenditure using a perfectly competitive market as a reference point. Competitive market price and quantity outcomes for the Australian dairy industry are estimated. The impacts of increments in dairy product and competing product generic promotion expenditures on dairy farmers’ profits are assessed using equilibrium displacement modelling. Finally, graphical procedures are used to examine the effects of dairy industry regulation on the profitability of dairy promotion.     

农村专业合作组织效率评估及其影响因素研究以山西省原平市为例

目的 农村专业合作组织是推动乡村振兴战略有效落地的重要组织保障之一,探究其效率及影响因素有助于促进新时期农村专业合作组织高质量发展与乡村产业兴旺。方法 文章以传统农区山西省原平市为例,采用Bootstrap-DEA模型评估了126家样本农村专业合作组织效率,并在此基础上结合多元线性回归模型对农村专业合作组织效率的影响因素进行分析。结果 （1）样本农村专业合作组织的经营管理水平整体较高,但仍存在投入冗余的情况,影响农村专业合作组织效率的主要制约因素在于纯技术效率;（2）粮食类合作组织整体效率相较其他两类合作组织差距较为明显,在内部管理方式、资源利用能力、新技术运用等方面问题突出;（3）增强合作组织的人力资本积累和电子商务竞争力是提升合作组织效率的关键,此外,土地细碎化会引发规模不经济,不利于农业生产技术效率改善。结论 要改进传统农区农村专业合作组织效率,建议健全其内部管理运营机制,加强农业技术引进、推广,全面联合、优化粮食类农村专业合作组织,加大对合作组织成员培训的投入力度,深入推进数字乡村发展战略,积极引导农户参与合理高效的土地流转。     

Hog Industry Structure and the Stringency of Environmental Regulation

The paper develops a comparative statics model of long‐run industry equilibrium in the presence of size‐based environmental regulation stringency and applies the model to the U.S. hog industry. The economic model shows that when size‐based environmental stringency is also size biased, large farms downsize, expand, or do neither depending on how environmental stringency shifts their marginal production cost relative to their average cost. Empirical testing using data from the top‐ten hog‐producing states suggests that environmental regulation stringency has limited impact on small farms and leads to a reduction in the number of large farms. Results cannot reject positive size bias at the farm level due to the stringency of environmental regulation.