Rice quality in relation to market prices in Yunnan Province

Factors affecting rice quality and their impacts on market price were investigated in this study. On-farm survey and market survey was undertaken in three selected sites namely Kunming, Dali, and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province, China. Market sampling was conducted to determine important rice quality characteristics. Sixty milled rice samples were collected from domestic markets of the three sites during a period of Mar to Apr in 1994. The grain physicochemical properties of the milled rice samples were analyzed on the basis of Chinese Agricultural Ministry Standard for testing rice quality. A hedonic price model (implicit price model) was further employed to quantify relationships between quality characteristics and market prices of rice. The model can be expressed mathematically as the following function (1) This function shows that the average price paid by consumer for different grades of rice with attribute Xj. Using the ordinary least square (OLS) regression of observed market prices on measures