Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies

China's biofuel industry faces the problem of insufficient supply of biomass feedstock because farmers lack the funds to carry out their planting plans. Moreover, natural disasters can easily expose farmers to bankruptcy risks, making it difficult for farmers with limited capital to obtain fina...

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Main Authors: Fei Ye, Zefei Xie, Zigong Cai, Qiang Lin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8943398/
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author Fei Ye
Zefei Xie
Zigong Cai
Qiang Lin
author_facet Fei Ye
Zefei Xie
Zigong Cai
Qiang Lin
author_sort Fei Ye
collection DOAJ
description China's biofuel industry faces the problem of insufficient supply of biomass feedstock because farmers lack the funds to carry out their planting plans. Moreover, natural disasters can easily expose farmers to bankruptcy risks, making it difficult for farmers with limited capital to obtain financing from banks. This paper studies the government's subsidy programmes for helping farmers obtain financing: a poverty alleviation programme (PAP) and a social welfare programme (SWP). We construct a biofuel supply chain model including the government, the bank, farmers, and companies, which optimizes the biomass feedstock production and the government subsidy in different subsidy programmes. We find that high planting efficiency leads to a lower subsidy interest rate for farmers in PAP, while in SWP, high planting efficiency can promote the government to set higher subsidy interest rate when the competitive intensity between bioenergy companies is weak. Furthermore, the total biomass feedstock planting area and the optimal subsidy interest rate in SWP are larger (smaller) than those under PAP when the planting efficiency is higher (lower) than a certain threshold. An extension of our model shows that the government's subsidy policy for the farmer with financial constraints will reduce the benefits of the farmer who does not need to borrow from the bank. The government's failure to implement subsidy programmes can sometimes lead to a higher total income for farmers.
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spelling doaj.art-fddb666de7e24723a6d46a4bea95c82f2022-12-21T19:58:04ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362020-01-0188178819210.1109/ACCESS.2019.29625858943398Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government SubsidiesFei Ye0Zefei Xie1Zigong Cai2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8551-9159Qiang Lin3School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Business Administration, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, ChinaChina's biofuel industry faces the problem of insufficient supply of biomass feedstock because farmers lack the funds to carry out their planting plans. Moreover, natural disasters can easily expose farmers to bankruptcy risks, making it difficult for farmers with limited capital to obtain financing from banks. This paper studies the government's subsidy programmes for helping farmers obtain financing: a poverty alleviation programme (PAP) and a social welfare programme (SWP). We construct a biofuel supply chain model including the government, the bank, farmers, and companies, which optimizes the biomass feedstock production and the government subsidy in different subsidy programmes. We find that high planting efficiency leads to a lower subsidy interest rate for farmers in PAP, while in SWP, high planting efficiency can promote the government to set higher subsidy interest rate when the competitive intensity between bioenergy companies is weak. Furthermore, the total biomass feedstock planting area and the optimal subsidy interest rate in SWP are larger (smaller) than those under PAP when the planting efficiency is higher (lower) than a certain threshold. An extension of our model shows that the government's subsidy policy for the farmer with financial constraints will reduce the benefits of the farmer who does not need to borrow from the bank. The government's failure to implement subsidy programmes can sometimes lead to a higher total income for farmers.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8943398/Supply chain financebiofuel supply chainyield uncertaintygovernment subsidy
spellingShingle Fei Ye
Zefei Xie
Zigong Cai
Qiang Lin
Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
IEEE Access
Supply chain finance
biofuel supply chain
yield uncertainty
government subsidy
title Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
title_full Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
title_fullStr Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
title_full_unstemmed Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
title_short Optimization of the Biofuel Supply Chain With Capital-Constrained Farmers Under Government Subsidies
title_sort optimization of the biofuel supply chain with capital constrained farmers under government subsidies
topic Supply chain finance
biofuel supply chain
yield uncertainty
government subsidy
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8943398/
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AT zefeixie optimizationofthebiofuelsupplychainwithcapitalconstrainedfarmersundergovernmentsubsidies
AT zigongcai optimizationofthebiofuelsupplychainwithcapitalconstrainedfarmersundergovernmentsubsidies
AT qianglin optimizationofthebiofuelsupplychainwithcapitalconstrainedfarmersundergovernmentsubsidies