Abstract
Farmers’ associations play an important role to help members increase their access to supports of information, capital, and technology; bring benefits to members; and partly promote production, enhance productivity, and increase income. This paper systematizes the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence on income difference between the member and non-member farmers and identifies factors that affect their decisions to join associations. By comparing specific characteristics between the member and non-member farmers, the paper examines the impact of joining farmers’ associations on the income of tea farmers in Vietnam by using the data from the survey of 742 farms. In our sample, 376 respondents are members and 366 non-members of associations in the four largest tea-producing areas, which cover 30 provinces in Vietnam. The paper uses OLS regression model to identify the factors that influence the decision of tea farms to join farmers’ organizations and tobit model to assess more detailed impacts of membership on income. The findings show that the farmers, who are members of an association, are more helpful in the ability to access better market services and more tea prices, and are more likely to earn a higher average income than those are non-members. Moreover, their memberships result in an increase of 0.166 unit of income. The research results also show that other factors, including labor, tea price, share of tea sold, farmer age, tea area, ability to access extension services, and credit services, affect the farmer’s income.
Highlights
In Vietnam, tea is considered more highly effective than other products to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty and contribute to developing the local economy
Associations can be considered as an important factor in the effort of hunger elimination and poverty reduction in Vietnam
It can be concluded that the impact factors of the decision to join associations and of farm income including: First, the positive factors including education, experience, labor used, tea price, tea age, tea area, farm size, ethnicity, region, extension service and credit access which are likely to affect to the willingness to join an association, gender, age are negative
Summary
In Vietnam, tea is considered more highly effective than other products to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty and contribute to developing the local economy. In 1999, the government recognized the tea industry as one of 10 strategic exporting products and approved the industry planning from 2000 to 2010. In 2018, 128,000 tons of teas were exported, with the revenue of 219 million USD. In 2019, 500,000 tons of dried leaves were produced, 130,000 ha cultivated, 400,000 farms, 500 producing and processing units, and created over 1.5 million new jobs annually (General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO) 2019). Few tea varieties have a high yield and outstanding quality in some regions, which have become tea brand names, i.e., Tan Cuong, Moc Chau, and Bao Loc. International economic integration creates opportunities to diversify broad categories to meet the demand of domestic and overseas consumers, e.g., dried and shaped tea leaves, green tea, Oolong tea, scented tea, herbal tea, and new tea varieties such as Bat Tien and Ngoc Thuy. The domestic market has niches for four tea products, namely green
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
