A Co-Opetition Straw Supply Strategy Integrating Rural Official Organizations and Farmers’ Behavior in China

Abstract

China has a huge potential of biomass power generation since it is a big agricultural producer and abundant in agriculture straw. However, the current straw supply system cannot guarantee the feedstock sufficiency for biomass power plants. The main reason is the high costs of straw collection and transportation because farmers are scattered across the country and farming in a small-scaled method for self-support. This study aims at solving the issue with the introduction of China’s rural official organizations to collect agriculture straw in a centralized way and to share benefits with farmers. We apply the approach of multi-agent modeling and simulation to analyze the farmer’s participation behavior within a co-opetition supply strategy after the rural official organizations are incorporated. The results demonstrate that farmers’ participation is positively affected by the cooperative enthusiasm of rural official organizations. In addition to those basic factors, such as straw price, transportation cost, and shipping distance, the benefit sharing policy has a significant impact on the equilibrium percentage of the cooperative farmers. We recommend that the Chinese central government encourage and support rural official organizations to participate in the agriculture straw supply chain, and the benefit sharing policy should be implemented with the precaution against free rides.

Research on immature wheat harvesting behavior of farmers from the perspective of food security: An evolutionary game based analysis

“…However, despite increased government supervision, prohibiting farmers from harvesting immature wheat has proven challenging, rendering the policy ineffective. On one hand, due to the prevailing reality of small-scale production and dispersed locations among many Chinese farmers, enforcing the government's penalty policy becomes arduous, often demanding significant human, material, and financial resources [ 8 ]. On the other hand, the government's policy to ban the cutting of immature wheat often lacks the implementation of complementary subsidy and guidance measures [ 9 ].…”

From Passive to Active: The Paradigm Shift of Straw Collection

“…He also analyzed the cost and energy consumption of 5 links, including field collection, primary transportation, storage at the collection and storage station, secondary transportation, and raw material loading and unloading (Huo et al, 2016). China's rural official organizations to collect agriculture straw in a centralized way and to share benefits with farmers (Luo et al, 2018) we develop a straw collection and transportation model using transfer stations and propose a method to calculate the corresponding transportation costs based on China's specific agricultural and rural transportation conditions in this paper. Transportation cost calculations and location optimization for each transfer station are carried out in ArcMap (Cao et al, 2016).…”

Driving Mechanism of Farmers’ Utilization Behaviors of Straw Resources—An Empirical Study in Jilin Province, the Main Grain Producing Region in the Northeast Part of China

“…Farmers' utilization behavior of straw resources is affected by government policies, production habits, planting structure, the participation of rural official organizations, and other factors. Most farmers tend to utilize straw resources as fuel and feed [5,6]. In the Northeast part of China, corn stalks are crushed and returned to the fields to protect the black earth.…”

“…Moreover, the subsidies work better nowadays since farmers have higher monetary sensitivity [57,58]. The social media and interactions also have a significant impact on the willingness of farmers to accept the straw energy utilization, with both of them inter-linked with each other [5,[57][58][59]. Krishna designed a uniform-price reverse auction and real payment system to incentivize the avoidance of open-field burning of rice straw by farmers in Nepal.…”