Impactos da formação espacial de preços na competitividade relativa da fruticultura irrigada do Estado do Ceará

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Eliane Pinheiro de
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/122
• topic: Formação espacial de preços; Competitividade; Fruticultura irrigada; Spatial price formation; Competitivity; Irrigated fruit culture; CNPQ::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::ECONOMIA::ECONOMIAS AGRARIA E DOS RECURSOS NATURAIS::ECONOMIA AGRARIA

The irrigated areas in the state of Ceara have distinct productive and infrastructure structures. Fruit growing activities in these areas are subjected to market imperfections, since farmers are dependent on oligopolies when acquiring modern inputs and on oligopsonies when selling the fruit produced. Such economic distortions are a consequence of the spatial dispersion of production, with farmers soon being faced with price formation processes for inputs and products with differentiated transference costs for each region. Thus, this work assesses how price spatial determination processes for inputs and products determines competitivity differences among the fruit growing activities practiced in the irrigated fruit culture regions in the state of Ceara (Baixo Acaraú, Baixo Jaguaribe, Cariri, Centro-Sul, Ibiapaba and Metropolitano). Determining the cause of these differences may be the basis for the formulation of public policy measures aimed at promoting a more balanced development in the various regions, generating more employment, income, and foreign exchange credits. Thus, an applied spatial general balance model was used. This tool allows the simulation of policies aiming to reduce competitivity differences of fruit growing activities developed in these areas, which may be originated from the reduction of transference costs by improving transportation infrastructure, technological and organizational changes; and/or from the combined action of these intervention measures. The results obtained by simulating transference cost reduction with the Padre Cícero Highway construction indicated increased levels of fruit growing activities in the regions benefited and, as a consequence, reduced prices, rendering these productive sectors more competitive. The technological change simulations showed that the substitution of the irrigation system via inundation in the banana culture in the Central southern region through the localized irrigation systems would lead to reallocation of the productive activities from this region, causing an increase in the prices. In the case of incorporation of the fertigation technique, growth was confirmed in the levels of the activities of the sectors involved, resulting in lower prices. Besides, the impacts of the organizational changes were evaluated, so as to allow fruit producers to participate in a vertical integration and those less technologically developed to have more market power in their commercial transactions. The implementation of these measures allowed the resources originated from this greater market power to be redistributed into the activities within the irrigated area favored. As for the well-being levels of the economic agents considered, it was verified that, in all the scenarios evaluated, the wellbeing levels matched the changes in income, although their percent variations were much lower than those of the income, indicating that a considerable part of the income increase was absorbed by the positive variation of prices. In view of this, it was confirmed that income variation indicator is a better reflector of the producers' gain since the specified model does not allow these producers to interact with the rest of the economy. Thus, this study has contributed to identify public policy measures that may reduce the regional competitivity differences of the productive activities developed in irrigated fruit growing areas of the state of Ceara.