Abstract:

Knowing the changes in technical requirements of farmers is the premise for further improving the agricultural extension work. Based on the on-site questionnaire survey to the farmers in Xingju Agricultural Science and Technology Cooperative and their individual counterparts in Beilin district, Suihua municipality, Heilongjiang province, comparisons of the technical requirements of the soybean farmers working cooperatively or individually to soybean production technologies were made and the input-output efficiency of two organizing models was analyzed. Analysis of the investigation data showed that the cooperative and individual farmer had different technical requirements priority, and they also varied in the requirements to the contents of the given technical category. Agricultural machinery and facilities, new varieties, and cultivation and fertilization technologies were the top 3 technical requirements of the cooperative. However, for the individual farmers, those were new varieties, cultivation and fertilization technologies, and disease and insect pest prevention and control technologies. In Agricultural machinery and facilities aspects, the top priority of the cooperative was tillage machinery, and that of individual farmers was the seeding machinery. In the requirements of both cooperative and individual farmers to the varieties, the top priority was the high-yielding varieties especially for those with tolerances to abiotic stresses. In cultivation management and fertilization aspects, the top priority of the cooperative was cultivation models and tillage technologies, and that of individual farmers was cultivation models and fertilization technologies. In plant disease and insect pest prevention and control aspects, the top priority of the agricultural cooperative was the mitigation technologies for continuous soybean cropping, and that of individual farmers was the integrated prevention and control technologies for troublesome weeds in soybean fields. In economy advice, information service and policy aid aspects, the top priority of the cooperative was to reduce production costs and large-scale production manner, and that of individual farmers was to reduce production costs and to achieve timely market information service. The investigation proved that agricultural cooperative had apparent advantages in input-output efficiency of soybean production compared with individual farmers. In this paper, we also presented the proposals for improving the agricultural extension services and for promoting soybean research facing to different production scales.