Agricultural cooperatives participating in vegetable supply chain integration: A case study of a trinity cooperative in China

PLoS One. 2021 Jun 24;16(6):e0253668. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253668. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Supply chain integration plays an important role in the development of the vegetable industry in terms of vegetable quality, vegetable safety, and vegetable security in rural China. This paper explores how agricultural cooperatives integrate the vegetable supply chain by taking a trinity cooperative as an example in China. It explains the translation concatenation of supply chain integration for this cooperative by constructing actor networks in four development stages, including the seed stage, start-up stage, development stage, and mature stage. The findings show that supply chain integration in production cooperation, supply & sales cooperation, and credit cooperation is a useful trinity cooperative model of supply chain integration for investigating vegetable supply chain integration through internal integration and external integration. This paper suggests that cooperatives in the vegetable supply chain should facilitate close coordination among different shareholders and further improve the efficiency of supply chain integration. The government should provide training opportunities and funding to encourage cooperatives to participate in supply chain integration within the vegetable industry.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Crop Production / economics*
  • Farmers*
  • Humans
  • Rural Population*
  • Vegetables* / economics
  • Vegetables* / growth & development
  • Vegetables* / supply & distribution

Grants and funding

We acknowledge the financial support of the financial support of Qianjiang Talents Plan (type C)(Grant NO. QJC1902001), National Social Science Foundation of China (Grand No. 17BGL132), Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Planning (Grand No. 21NDJC318YBM).