Relationship of Cooperative Management and Green and Low-Carbon Transition of Agriculture and Its Impacts: A Case Study of the Western Tarim River Basin

Abstract

Clarifying the relationship between cooperative management and cultivated land use eco-efficiency (LUEE) is of great significance to promoting the green and low-carbon transition of agriculture. To explore the role of cooperative management in the green and low-carbon transition of agriculture of smallholder farmers in the western Tarim River Basin, in this study, based on the field survey data of 444 farmers in 2021, the carbon emissions of cultivated land were used to measure the LUEE with the slack-based model (SBM) with undesirable outputs. Then, propensity score matching (PSM) was used to test the relationship between cooperative management and LUEE. Additionally, the mediating effect of farmers’ green development willingness (FGDW) and the moderating effect of farmers’ part-time off-farm employment (POE) on the relationship was explored. The present study hypothesized that joining cooperatives has an improving effect on the LUEE, which can be achieved by increasing FGDW, and this effect can be enhanced by farmers’ POE. The results show that: (1) The LUEE was generally low (average LUEE value: 0.2678), and there was a significant difference between farmer households (the difference between the maximum and minimum values was as high as 2.8716). (2) Cooperative management had a significant improving effect on the LUEE. The LUEE of cooperative farmers (ACF) increased by 8.6% compared with that of non-cooperative farmers (NACF). (3) Joining a cooperative could improve the LUEE by improving FGDW. (4) POE could enhance the improving effect of cooperative management on the LUEE. Overall, all three hypotheses were supported: cooperative management could achieve scale effects that small farmers cannot achieve, which had a positive effect on improving the LUEE. This study provides a new ecological perspective for the analysis of the relationship between agricultural cooperatives and LUEE and decision-making reference for the rational utilization of cultivated land in northwest China.