School of Information, Beijing Wuzi University, Beijing, China.
Beijing Municipal Tax Service, State Taxation Administration, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2021 Jan 25;16(1):e0245981. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245981. eCollection 2021.
Agricultural modernization and intensification have been regarded as a significant way to support agricultural development and improve farm income in China. Agricultural cooperatives have played an important role in promoting the modernization and intensification of Chinese agricultural sector. Given the increasing concerns about environmental harm, however, it still remains unclear whether and the extent to which agricultural cooperatives contributes to reducing environmental impacts of agricultural production. Hence, this study performed an environmental evaluation using life cycle assessment for three different organization forms of grape production in Changli County, Hebei Province, China: smallholder farmers, farmer-owned cooperatives and investor-owned firm-led cooperatives. Then the results of life cycle assessment were monetarized and cost benefit analysis was used to evaluate the economic performance of these three organization forms of grape production. The results demonstrate that investor-owned firm-led cooperatives present an overall improvement in environmental and economic performance with the lowest weighted environmental index (integrating all impact categories into a single score), the highest net profit and the highest total net benefit. The results also show a difference in potential improvement in environmental impacts and economic returns between cooperatives and smallholder farmers. Additionally, the production and application of organic and chemical fertilizer and pesticide have been identified as major contributors to total environmental damage.
农业现代化和集约化被认为是支持中国农业发展和提高农民收入的重要途径。农业合作社在促进中国农业现代化和集约化方面发挥了重要作用。然而，鉴于人们对环境危害的日益关注，农业合作社是否以及在何种程度上有助于减少农业生产对环境的影响仍不清楚。因此，本研究采用生命周期评价方法，对河北省昌黎县三种不同的葡萄生产组织形式（小农户、农民所有的合作社和投资者所有的公司主导的合作社）进行了环境评估。然后，将生命周期评估的结果货币化，并进行成本效益分析，以评估这三种葡萄生产组织形式的经济绩效。结果表明，投资者所有的公司主导的合作社在环境和经济绩效方面表现出整体改善，加权环境指数（将所有影响类别综合为一个单一分数）最低，净利润最高，总净收益最高。结果还显示了合作社和小农户之间在环境影响和经济回报方面的潜在改善差异。此外，有机肥和化学肥料和农药的生产和应用已被确定为造成总环境损害的主要因素。
