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Unprecedented economic growth in China has created a new market potential for high-quality foods in the global food industry. This has led several studies to investigate consumer preferences for food safety and quality attributes in the retail market. However, there are limited studies related to the food service sector, specifically to combine these two concepts. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate these preferences from the perspectives of both the customers and restaurant managers in relation to ducks in the Chinese food service sector. This involved estimating the willingness-to-pays for quality and safety attributes such as branding, premium quality, safety certification, and the biotech country of origin, including the United States, the European Union, and China using regression analysis. The empirical results showed that Chinese consumers and restaurant owners/managers have a similar preference for branded, high quality, and safe domestic products. However, their relative preferences for these attributes are not identical, as indicated by the consumers' highest preference for safety certification, while managers mostly focus on the quality. These findings are expected to provide more information on the market preferences for food produced in emerging Asian economies with special diet cultures and traditions.

PurposeThis paper traces the timeline and milestones of Chinese graduate students in agricultural economics and related fields at foreign universities, with an emphasis on North American universities, since the early 1980s, and assesses the contributions of Chinese doctoral recipients from foreign universities to agricultural economic research and education in North America and China.Design/methodology/approachData from department and college websites, associations of agricultural economics, university libraries and databases of theses and dissertations and selected agricultural economic journals in English and Chinese are used to attain the above purposes through graphical and bibliometric analyses.FindingsFirst, the numbers of Chinese doctoral recipients and tenure-track and tenured faculty in agricultural economics at North American universities have increased steadily and significantly. Second, Chinese scholars in North America have achieved tremendous success in agricultural economic research via high-quality publications, prestigious awards, editorship of top journals, leadership in professional organizations, etc. Third, more Chinese doctoral recipients overseas have increasingly returned to China and are playing important roles in China’s agricultural economic research, education and international collaboration. Fourth, the publications of overseas Chinese scholars in Chinese journals and those of their counterparts working in China on topics beyond China are relatively limited and more collaboration may enhance the global impacts of Chinese agricultural economists.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited by data availability and quality and the data problems are discussed in the paper.Originality/valueThis is likely the first study to assess the contributions of Chinese doctoral recipients from foreign universities to agricultural economic research and education in China and abroad.

Crop insurance is the most common agricultural risk management instrument. In developing countries, crop insurance is becoming popular but is often provided with lower coverage, lower premiums and less subsidy than in developed countries. We use a labelled choice experiment method to investigate Chinese smallholder corn growers’ preferences for alternative types of insurance. In addition to traditional yield insurance, we assess farmers’ willingness to pay for coverage levels in price, revenue and weather index insurance, which are currently at the experimental stage in China. We find farmer preferences for these various types of insurance to be heterogeneous. On average, farmers are willing to pay for all types of insurance and for additional coverage but only at the current high subsidy level. We explore heterogeneity in willingness to pay and find that farmers’ positive past insurance experience plays a very important role in their demand for insurance.

Existing studies on farmers' willingness to reuse agricultural biomass waste usually focus on individual and social economic characteristics without consideration of the underlying psychological factors. This paper uses the theory of planned behavior, a typical social psychology model, to identify the psychological constructs that affect farmers' intentions to reuse agricultural biomass waste for carbon emission abatement. According to this theory, an individual's behavior is driven by the individual's intention, which in turn is determined by the individual's attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the logical relationships among these constructs. The results showed that farmers' intentions were significantly determined by their attitudes, followed by their perceived behavioral controls. Meanwhile, multiple-group analyses were conducted to determine the differences of the driving factors between different types of farmers on their intentions to reuse agricultural biomass waste. Subjective norms were proven to be a factor affecting the reuse intentions of the farmers who are female, highly educated, having high income or less farming experience. These findings can be used by policy-makers to formulate incentive policies to motivate farmers' agricultural biomass waste reuse intentions or even behaviors. Effective approaches should be developed to cultivate farmers' positive attitudes, ecological benefits awareness and social norms consciousness, in order to arouse their enthusiasm for participating in reuse practice to mitigate climate change. The conclusions of this study also provide an important scientific basis for developing countries and regions to encourage farmers to reuse agricultural biomass waste for carbon emission abatement.

Recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries, motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture. In this article, we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in both developed and developing countries, using China as a special case of the latter. We pay careful attention to broad implications of this research for economic development. We first find empirical studies consistently support the positive contribution of contract farming to production and supply chain efficiency. We also find that most empirical studies identify a positive and significant effect of contract farming on farmer welfare, yet are often unable to reach consistent conclusions as to significant correlates of contract participation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a big picture of the current context of Chinese economy, the government policies on agriculture, and the role of agricultural risks and risk management against this background.Design/methodology/approachThe new Chinese economic challenges are laid out upfront. Relevant agricultural issues are then provided, with statistics; next, risks and risk management topics are introduced and controversial issues in agriculture are discussed. Relevant policies reflected in the State Council's No. 1 documents in both 2012 and 2013 are introduced and filled in each section.FindingsThe Chinese economy may slow down after decades of fast development. Food security is still a top priority, even with the income rise. Increased labor cost may transform Chinese agriculture from the traditional labor intensive field management into a modern agriculture characterized by high input use and larger scale.Research limitations/implicationsThe research implication is directing economists focusing on Chinese agricultural risks to grasp the opportunity of the Chinese government investing in agricultural research and development, to look more broadly, to involve multidisciplinary research with the natural sciences, and to refer to the situation of modern agriculture.Practical implicationsThere are some policy implications. Further liberalization of land ownership is called for, as is the development of infrastructure.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the objectives in putting agricultural risks and risk management into the overall big picture of the Chinese economy and government policies.

The relationship between agricultural taxation and production efficiency has been thoroughly explored for many countries. Recently, China has taken various measures including the rural taxation reform (RTR) to promote grain production and to increase farmer incomes. In this study, we investigate whether the Chinese policy of abolishing rural taxation has improved farm households’ incomes and affected their production decisions. Using household survey data obtained from three regions in China, we estimate the effect of the RTR on farmers’ income. Results show that the RTR has significantly improved farmers’ post-tax net income by 9.2% in Shandong, 16.9% in Shanxi and 16.8% in Zhejiang. These increments, mostly from farm income rather than from off-farm income, are much higher than the direct income increase from the tax savings. In addition, we examine the dynamic impact of farmers’ net income, and find that the RTR has a sustained positive income effect in Shandong and Shanxi, whereas its positive effect in Zhejiang appears temporary. We also examine farmers’ production responses to the RTR. Results show that farmers in the three regions respond in different ways: farmers in Shandong significantly increase their labour input, farmers in Zhejiang increase intermediate inputs, whereas Shanxi farmers augment their intermediate inputs and enlarge their crop acreage. It appears that the farmers’ responses to the taxation reform vary due to the agronomic and economic factors in these three regions, suggesting that diverse post-RTR supplemental policies should be implemented in different regions.

At the new release of the 2016 Number One Document of the Chinese Central Government, public attention is drawn to food, agricultural, and rural issues facing China. The 1.4 billion population of C...

In this study, the impact of Chinese rural taxation reform (RTR) on farm household income is investigated, using panel data collected from nearly 1,000 farm households in fifteen villages in the Yangtze river delta (YRD) area between 1995 and 2005. The results from fixed-effect regression show that RTR had a significant impact, increasing farmer income by 6.82 percent. This increase is much more than the direct income increase brought about by an exemption from the agricultural tax. When the dynamic impact of RTR on farm household income was examined, it was found that the most significant income increase occurred in the first three years after the execution of the new tax policy.