Estimating effects of cooperative membership on farmers’ safe production behaviors: evidence from the rice sector in China

The current agricultural system in China highly depends on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Consequently, agricultural production activities cause various environmental issues. Carrying out safe production provides vital support for sustainable development of agriculture, which may improve this situation. The past decades have witnessed the fast development of rural cooperatives organization in China. Given the fact that rural cooperative organization plays a crucial role in agricultural production, however, there is little empirical evidence on the relationship between cooperative membership and safe production of smallholders in China. This study aims to investigate whether the participation in farmer cooperatives contributes to safe production in agriculture in China. Using survey data covering 623 rice-producing farm households in Sichuan province in China, this study employs the endogenous switching regression model to examine the effects of the participation in farmer cooperatives on safe production in rice agriculture. The results show that cooperative membership has significantly positive effects on safe production in rice agriculture. In particular, the average treatment effects demonstrate that without the participation in cooperatives, the members’ adoption of the green control techniques would reduce by 74.491%, the application of artificial weeding would reduce by 38.768%, and organic fertilizer input would reduce by 23.448%. Furthermore, the marginal treatment effect is employed to evaluate the heterogeneous effects of the participation in farmer cooperatives on safe production in rice agriculture. Heterogeneous effect analyses suggest that farmers who are more likely to participate in farmer cooperatives are easier to adopt green control technology, while farmers who are less likely to participate in farmer cooperatives are easier to adopt artificial weeding and increase organic fertilizer input. To improve safe production in rice agriculture, the Chinese government is expected to encourage rice farmers to participate in rural cooperative organizations, and to stimulate rice farmers to take collective action to address environment issues arising from agricultural production.