Social Network Analysis of Farmers after the Private Cooperatives’ “Intervention” in a Rural Area of China—A Case Study of the XiangX Cooperative in Shandong Province

Qingzhi Sun, Guanyi Yin (), Wei Wei, Zhan Zhang, Guanghao Li and Shenghao Zhu
Additional contact information
Qingzhi Sun: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Guanyi Yin: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Wei Wei: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Zhan Zhang: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Guanghao Li: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Shenghao Zhu: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: In China, private-owned cooperatives are becoming increasingly involved in agricultural production. In order to find the key characteristics of smallholders’ social networks after the appearance of cooperatives and better organize different farmland operators, this study completed a field survey of 114 smallholders who adopted farmland trusteeship service of a private-owned cooperative in China and applied the social network analysis to reveal the following results. (1) Compared to the theoretical ideal value, smallholders’ social networks showed low network density, efficiency, and little relevancy. (2) In the social network of mechanical-sharing, neighbor, kinship, and labor-sharing relationships, some isolated nodes existed, but no isolated nodes are found in the synthetic network. (3) The mechanical-sharing relationship among smallholders was stronger than the other relationships. (4) Machinery owners, farmers whose plots are on the geometric center and experienced older farmers showed higher centralities in the network, but village cadres did not. (5) The centralities and QAP correlation coefficients among different networks inside the cooperative were lower than that inside a single village. As a result, this paper confirmed that the ability of cooperatives to organize farmers’ social networks is not ideal. Farmers’ trust of farmland to a cross-village cooperatives does not help them to form a larger social network than their villages. In the future, the answer to the question of “who will farm the land” will still lie with the professional farmers and highly autonomous cooperatives.

Keywords: private-owned cooperative; transformation of rural community; social network analysis; farmland trusteeship service; smallholders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/5/649/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/5/649/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:14:y:2024:i:5:p:649-:d:1380711

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().