Farmers' safe vegetable production and information behavior: An empirical analysis for supervision improvement

A large proportion of vegetable lands in China are widely scattered plots, resulting in difficult supervision of vegetable production process. Little research has been done to analyze supervision problems from both production behavior and information behavior. This paper presents an investigation in Guangdong province of China, from a special viewpoint of both vegetable production behavior and information behavior, with statistical analysis and Logit model based regression methods to analyze farmers' behavior characteristics and problems in vegetable quality supervision system. Empirical results show that behavior of the surveyed farmers present characteristics of poor consciousness of vegetable safety, shortage of safe vegetable planting knowledge, performing unsuitable production behavior and low utilization rate of information technology, and the quality supervision problems are revealed as insufficient vegetable quality inspection strength for small-scale planting, inadequate production trainings, imperfect information supply modes, imperfect traceability of production records, and so on. Final proposed suggestions can provide reference data and decision-making evidences for the improvement of vegetable quality supervision system of China.