Flutuações estacionais no preço de milho no estado de São Paulo

Resumo

Generally, agricultural products have seasonal price fluctuations. Knowledge of these fluctuations is of fundamental importance to those whoproduce, sell, and consume the products, A betterknowledge of the behavior of the prices is an important factor for better commercial flow of products.

This paper analyzes the seasonal fluctuations in the prices of corn in the State of Sao Paulo from 1951 through 1963. The prices were adjusted (1953=100) according to the São Paulo index of agricultural pricesy, at the producer level, The seasonal fluctuations were eliminated by a 12-month moving average. Then the relative seasonal fluctuationswere calculated for each month and each year of the period July 1951 - June 1951 - June 1963, thus obtaining the seasonal Price index.

In the interest of determining if the seasonal fluctuations are increasing, decrea sing or remaining constant, the behavior of the trend of each month was studied. The data indicate that, with the passage of time, there was a decrease in the fluctuations during the harvest, and an increase in the fluctuations between harvests. This signifies that there was a decrease in the amplitude of the fluctuations during harvest time and an increase between harvests, during the period 1951-63.