Purpose To promote sustainable and efficient agricultural development, cooperatives play a crucial role in helping farmers access inputs, markets and technologies. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on how cooperative participation enhances both economic outcomes and sustainable farming behavior in Vietnam's dragon fruit sector, an export-oriented yet under-researched crop. Design/methodology/approach The study employs household survey data collected from dragon fruit farmers in Binh Thuan Province, comparing cooperative members and non-members in terms of VietGAP certification, technology adoption, production costs and income per hectare. To address potential selection bias, Propensity Score Matching and Endogenous Switching Regression/Probit models are applied. Findings Results reveal that cooperative membership significantly increases the likelihood of adopting resource-efficient technologies and complying with food safety standards. Moreover, members achieve higher income per hectare and improved production efficiency. Cooperatives help reduce technical and financial constraints, coordinate resources and provide policy and market information that support sustainable agricultural transformation. Research limitations/implications This study is limited by its use of cross-sectional data, which restrict the ability to capture changes in farmers’ behavior and fully address endogeneity over time. Additionally, the findings may have limited external validity, as the analysis focuses on dragon fruit farmers in Binh Thuan province and may not represent other regions in Vietnam. Social implications By empowering smallholders and improving their resilience to market and climate risks, cooperatives contribute to safer, more inclusive and environmentally sustainable food systems in Southeast Asia. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by examining the dual impact of cooperative membership on both farm income and the adoption of sustainability-related innovations, an area often overlooked in prior research. Focusing on Vietnam’s export-oriented dragon fruit sector, it provides new empirical evidence on how cooperatives support sustainable practices and compliance with standards such as VietGAP. Methodologically, the study addresses selection bias using rigorous econometric approaches, offering more reliable and policy-relevant insights into the role of cooperatives in promoting both economic and environmental outcomes.

This study aimed to clarify the awareness of the contribution of agricultural corporations to regional agriculture and determine the influence of the attributes of agricultural corporations and their self-evaluations on their awareness of their contribution to regional agriculture. Using an original nationwide questionnaire survey, this study conducted a factor analysis and generalized linear model analysis to elucidate the factors influencing awareness of contribution to the local community. The analysis revealed the following. First, the factor analysis on the awareness of contribution to regional agriculture revealed "contribution to regional agriculture," "contribution to the local economy," and "contribution to solving farmland problem" as latent awareness structures with separate dimensions. Second, the results of the factor elucidation analysis of the consciousness of contribution to regional agriculture revealed that corporations in the growth stage of management had a high consciousness of contribution to economic revitalization and farmland problems, whereas those in the mature and decline stages had a low consciousness, suggesting that the perception of the management stage influences the consciousness of contribution. Finally, regarding self-evaluation, agricultural corporations that perceive "trust from clients and the community and the corporate brand," "ICT utilization and information management," and "management philosophy and management vision" as "strengths" have a higher awareness of contribution to agricultural and economic revitalization.

本研究では,ニワトリにシロアリを給与して生産された鶏卵およびシロアリに人間の健康に良い機能性成分が見つかったとの仮想情報を提示した場合の鶏卵に対する消費者の喫食意思とそれに影響する個人の価値観と意識的要因を明らかにした.Webアンケート調査を実施し,998名の回答者のデータを用いて,喫食意思に影響する要因を共分散構造分析によって明らかにした.分析の結果,嫌悪感とシロアリを給与することに対する好感,および林業・地方再生に対する支持が影響したが,食料新奇性恐怖の影響は小さいことが分かった.男女間比較では,女性の方が喫食意思に与える嫌悪感および林業・地方再生に対する支持の影響が大きく,シロアリを給与することに対する好感の影響は小さくなった.また,シロアリに機能性成分が見つかった場合には,嫌悪感の影響が小さくなり,林業・地方再生に対する支持の影響が強くなることが明らかになった.

Tea production conducted under the standards of Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices (VietGAP) has been strongly encouraged by the Vietnam government. However, there is no study on profit efficiency of VietGAP tea producers, which are therefore barriers for farmers and policymakers in terms of extending the tea production practice in Vietnam. Thus, this study investigated the profit efficiency of tea production practices using a stochastic profit frontier function. We applied propensity score matching to control for self- selection in assessing the profit efficiency of VietGAP and conventional tea farming. Our results indicated that the average profit efficiency of tea farmers was around 74%, suggesting 26% of profit was lost due to inefficiency. Furthermore, significant different profit efficiency was observed between the two farmer groups. We further found that tea farmers with larger production scale, better irrigation system, accessing extension service are more likely to adopt VietGAP tea practices than others are. Thus, public policies should focus on improving profit efficiency and facilitating adoption of eco-friendly production practice, and also supporting innovations to improve farmers' production conditions, including the access to extension service, irrigation system, enlarged farm size, and labor-saving machinery.

In community-based farming corporations, organizational continuity problems are becoming apparent owing to the aging phenomena of members and retirement of farmers. This study aims to clarify the present situation and strategic alliances of agricultural partner corporations through a case study of entrepreneurial farm businesses in an agriculturally disadvantaged area. The results of this study verify the following three points: First, it demonstrates that constructing a management strategy for a deep partnership with the rural community and aiming for the company’s development are important. Second, it clarifies that centralized management resources are crucial to realize business development and investment for regional revitalization. Third, it establishes that community-based initiatives are important for understanding and sympathizing with management philosophy.

Vietnam is an agricultural country where rice and maize are the two most important cereal crops. Recently, the proportion of high-tech agricultural products has increased; however, output quality and quantity have not reached the expectations. There are many possible reasons, one of which is that farmers lack skill, experience, and knowledge to receive and generate information sources. This chapter estimated the technical efficiency levels and identified the information factors that influence the technical inefficiency of crop farmers in the northwest highland of Vietnam using farm-level data. The results show that there are significant opportunities to increase technical inefficiency and no farm has full technical efficiency. Agricultural information from printed materials and frequent watching of television were significantly and negatively related to technical inefficiency. This indicates that if farmers read more agricultural information from printed materials and watch television related to social life at appropriate times, the technical efficiency of crop farms would increase. Based on the results, some suggestions are proposed to optimize crop-farm technical efficiency and increase the effectiveness of using information sources.

PurposeThe demand for clean vegetables has rapidly increased, many farmers gradually turn to vegetable cultivation to increase income; therefore, agricultural cooperative mobilized farmers group to facilitate them access to technical training and enhance compliance with the Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices (VietGAP) standards. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of the participation on farmer’s income as well as the major factors that affect the participation in cooperatives by the vegetable farmers in Vietnam.Design/methodology/approachThe study used primary data collected from vegetable farmers in Vietnam. This study utilized propensity score matching to avoid initial selection bias. The differences between participants and nonparticipants will be adjusted by matching each membership individual to a nonmember based on similar observable characteristics by summarizing the conditional probability of a member given pretreatment characteristics.FindingsThis study demonstrates that participation in cooperatives is significantly affected by ethnicity, age of household head, labor involving vegetable production and extension service access. The results of this study also confirm that agricultural cooperatives have positive effects on member farmers to enhance income and that participants – on average – have a higher income than nonparticipants.Research limitations/implicationsThe method cannot rule out the possibility of selection bias due to unobserved differences between participants and even an appropriate comparison group.Originality/valueThis study contributes to an improved understanding about impacts of cooperatives on farmers’ income in developing and emerging economies. Moreover, research also upgrades knowledge regarding the effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives in Vietnam, as well as guides policymakers in supporting the cooperatives in expanding the market and other necessary changes.

This study aims to clarify the ideal approach for governmental support in farm management development through a case study of the respective support in the developmental stage of farm management in agricultural extension services by the Hiroshima Prefectural Government. The study observes an actual farm management development which the Hiroshima Prefectural Government set as a benchmark of the agropolicy and focuses on the problems faced by farm managers and how they solved them; what organizations, such as local governments, provided support; and how farm managers increased their management abilities. According to this study, the Hiroshima Prefectural Government changed the method of establishing the policy goal of agriculture from promoting agricultural items to purposing an ideal image of farm management development. In addition, it set the index of farm management development according to the organizational system and human resource.

本稿では,稲作法人経営における自動化・ロボット技術の活用を規定する要因(以下,活用要因)を明らかにする.具体的には,全国農業法人アンケートに基づいたプロビット分析を行う.プロビット分析では,被説明変数に各自動化・ロボット技術の現在の活用状況を,説明変数に経営の目標・管理や経営・経営者属性を設定する.分析の結果,「操作アシスト機能付き農業機械」と「作物栽培機械作業の自動化・ロボット」に共通の活用要因は法人設立経緯であり,非農家出身者等が法人設立に参画した経営では,それ以外に比較し,技術を活用している確率が40.6–50.9ポイント上昇する結果になった.また各技術固有の活用要因について,「操作アシスト機能付き農業機械」は営農開始後の経過年数が長いこと,「作物栽培機械作業の自動化・ロボット」はICT活用力・情報マネジメントが強みであること,経営者年齢が60歳以上であること,水稲売上高が大きいことであった.「農地灌漑・給水の自動化」は有意な結果が得られなかった.以上より,稲作法人経営における自動化・ロボット技術の活用には,経営が有する他産業や先端技術に関連する知見・人材の影響があり,これが重要な活用要因と示唆された.また,各技術の特性から活用要因の差異がみられると考えられた.

Japanese farms currently occur on a small but expanding average physical scale and annual sales, in a decreasing and aging labor force, increasingly abandoned farmland and massive access of corporations powerful in capital and management. The government has proposed to accelerate agricultural growth through adopting high-level smart technologies in large-scale farms, with a series of favorite policies and measures. This paper reviews the connotations, characteristics and technologies of smart agriculture in the views of Japanese scholars, the practice of smart agriculture in Japan, followed by a case study on the smart rice production model 'NoshoNavi1000'. The results show that Japanese scholars have conducted in-depth and massive studies in smart agriculture, with regional characteristics in the orientations on labor-saving, precise management, disaster reduction and inheriting traditional farming skills. The government's ambitious objective is supported by its all-round policy package, including project demonstration, supporting services, environmental improvement, education and training, and overseas outreaching. Closely combined with the planting structure of Japanese agriculture, rice production is an important sector for the R&D and application of smart farming in the form of either individual technologies or models. The policies and technologies have achieved benefits in saving labor and production costs, and improving the profit margin. Through years of on-farm application, 'NoshoNavi1000' has been developed to involve the major technological components of smart agriculture. It has contributed to improving rice yield, production efficiency and profitability of large-scale farms, through real-time data collection, comprehensive and professional data mining, and specific and practical feedbacks. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between consciousness of contribution to regional agriculture and regional activity, using the results of an Internet survey focused on agricultural corporations. Three factors emerged from the analysis: consciousness of contribution to (1) regional agriculture, (2) regional economy, and (3) agricultural land problems in the region. The results of the classification and regression trees analysis showed that consciousness of contribution was influenced by three factors. First, event holding (e.g., farming experience) was an important factor in the consciousness of contribution to regional agriculture. Second, the acceptance of inspections and contract production with local farmers was an important factor in the consciousness of contribution to the regional economy. Finally, undertaking farmland for farmers without heirs was an important factor in the consciousness of contribution to land problems.

This study identified the determinants of ICT and smart farming (ICT&SF) technology adoption intensity by Japanese agricultural corporations. Primary data were collected from a Japan nationwide questionnaire survey on "Business Development and Innovation in Agricultural Corporation Management" in 2019. Data of 183 agricultural corporations in Japan were analyzed through descriptive analysis and negative binomial modeling. The results showed that 175 out of 183 corporations had adopted at least one ICT&SF technology until 2019, indicating an overall adoption rate of 95.6%. Majority (84.7%) of corporations were limited companies and stock companies, and 86.9% of the corporations were qualified to own farmlands. Regarding the profile of corporate representatives, over one third of the representatives graduated from universities. Based on the empirical results, corporate forms, eligibility to own farmland, sales targets, profit targets, main product and self-evaluation of ICT utilization and information management significantly affected the adoption of ICT&SF technologies adoption. In terms of the characteristics of corporate representatives, those who graduated from specialized schools and vocational colleges tended to adopt more ICT&SF technologies.

Financialization refers to the growing importance of finance, financial markets, and financial institutions to the functioning of the economy.This paper thus examines the consequences of agricultural financialization in the Chinese sugar market.We use monthly data from January 2006 to June 2019 to build a series of econometric models to identify internal and external shocks and their transfer regimes through impulse response analysis, variance decomposition, and Granger causality test derived from a structural vector autoregression model.We conclude that the phenomenon of agricultural financialization does not exist in the Chinese sugar market.

Innovation, an important component of productivity growth, is expected to contribute significantly toward changing rural and agricultural structures.The first step in understanding innovation implementation is to identify its driving factors.However, these factors remain unclear in the context of agricultural corporations.Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors associated with the product innovation implementation in Japanese agricultural corporations.A probit model was used to identify these driven factors by using the data of 308 corporations from the national survey in 2019.The results showed that 20.5% (n=63) of corporations were rice corporations.Most corporations (38.6%, n=199) generated an annual sales revenue of 100 to 300 million yen.Further, 50.0% of corporations implemented product innovation, that is, these corporations started to produce and sell new or significantly improved goods or launched new or significantly improved services.The results also show that corporations that generate high annual sales, seek high number of sales, aim for profit margins of 5-15%, and believe more strongly in their ability to innovate tend to implement product innovation.Contrastingly, corporations that have a profit margin between 1% and 10% are less likely to implement product innovation than those breaking even.Corporations that mainly deal in facility vegetables or livestock products also tend to implement product innovation less than the corporations mainly selling rice.Overall, the results suggest that a certain level of annual sales might be required for innovation, and innovating farms seek growth and set high targets.Therefore, to promote product innovation in Japanese agricultural corporations, these factors should be considered.