Evaluating the Impacts of Smallholder Farmer’s Participation in Modern Agricultural Value Chain Tactics for Facilitating Poverty Alleviation—A Case Study of Kiwifruit Industry in Shaanxi, China

Abstract

Market-based initiatives like agriculture value chain (AVC) are becoming progressively pervasive to support smallholder rural farmers and assist them in entering larger market interventions and providing a pathway of enhancing their socioeconomic well-being. Moreover, it may also foster staggering effects towards the post-era poverty alleviation in rural areas and possessed a significant theoretical and practical influence for modern agricultural development. The prime objective of the study is to explore the effects of smallholder farmers’ participation in the agricultural value chain for availing rural development and poverty alleviation. Specifically, we have crafted the assessment employing pre-production (improved fertilizers usage), in-production (modern preservation technology), and post-production (supply chain) participation and interventions of smallholder farmers. The empirical data has been collected from a micro survey dataset of 623 kiwifruit farmers from July to September in Shaanxi, China. We have employed propensity score matching (PSM), probit, and OLS models to explore the multidimensional poverty reduction impact and heterogeneity of farmers’ participation in the agricultural value chain. The results show that the total number of poor farmers who have experienced one-dimensional and two-dimensional poverty is relatively high (66.3%). We also find that farmers’ participation in agricultural value chain activities has a significant poverty reduction effect. The multidimensional poverty level of farmers using improved fertilizer, organizational acquisition, and using storage technology (compared with non-participating farmers) decreased by 30.1%, 46.5%, and 25.0%, respectively. The multidimensional poverty reduction degree of male farmers using improved fertilizer and participating in the organizational acquisition is greater than that of women. The multidimensional poverty reduction degree of female farmers using storage and fresh-keeping technology has a greater impact than the males using storage and improved storage technology. Government should widely promote the value chain in the form of pre-harvest, production, and post-harvest technology. The public–private partnership should also be strengthened for availing innovative technologies and infrastructure development.

Creating Food Value Chain Transformations through Regional Food Hubs: A Review Article

“…Hence, a few scholars discussed FVCs in the context of global issues, such as business strategy, knowledge, and capacity building [51,90]. The review showed that FVCs were seen more as a strategy that can be adopted to develop region's potential rather than to develop a food network at the global level [64,75,91]. Research topics often discussed by researchers related to FVC were mostly related to the development of upstream food actors.…”

Village Environment, Capital Endowment, and Farmers’ Participation in E-Commerce Sales Behavior: A Demand Observable Bivariate Probit Model Approach

“…The study's empirical data were obtained from a household field study conducted by the team of "Kiwifruit Industry Technology System" guided by State Key Laboratory, Northwest A&F University in September-October 2018, in Cangxi, Pujiang, and Dujiangyan counties of Sichuan Province, and Meixian, Zhouzhi, and Wugong counties of Shaanxi Province (see Figure 1). Kiwifruit is an essential target for e-commerce sales as it is a high-value and high-demand agricultural product, and Shaanxi and Sichuan are the two provinces with the largest kiwifruit cultivation areas in China [4]. According to the data of China Intelligence Research Consulting, the kiwifruit planting area in Shaanxi Province was about 1.03 million mu in 2018, and the kiwifruit planting area in Sichuan Province was about 600,000 mu.…”

Determinants of Farmers’ Confidence in Agricultural Production Recovery during the Early Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic in China

“…Meanwhile, household characteristics included agricultural labor force, household income level, the proportion of agricultural income, and household size. The model in the study also included provinces as dummy variables to reduce the impact of regional differences, as suggested by Wang et al [84].…”