Marketing of farmer professional cooperatives in the wave of transformed agrofood market in China

The upstream agrofood market in China is dominated by a vast number of small farmers and traders, which challenges food safety compliance. To promote small farmers' access to the commercialized agrofood market, membership in farmer professional economic cooperatives (FPCs) is considered to be an important strategy by the Chinese leaders. The goals of this study are to investigate the marketing of FPCs in China and to determine their record of food safety compliance. Based on 157 FPCs from a nearly national representative survey, this paper shows that marketing FPCs in China relies primarily on the wholesale market, but there is a notable penetration of the modern supply chain via FPCs. Government-driven agribusiness facilitates farmers' access to markets via FPCs. However, food safety standards are not well-specified in the current FPCs' marketing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.