Análise da oferta de alho em Minas Gerais em 1948-70

Resumo

Despite the economic importance of garlic in Brazil, a considerable amount must be imported to satisfy national demand. For the last five years Brazil has been importing about 28 percent of the garlic consumed.

Minas Gerais is an important garlic producing state. In 1970, 35 percent of the harvested garlic acreage and 32.5 percent of Brazil's total production came from Minas Gerais.

The state of Minas Gerais maintains a special program ("Raide de alho") through the state extension organization (ACAR). ACAR along with other institutions is working to develop the rural sector.

Garlic producers in Minas Gerais receive technical support such as research results released by institutions; however, economic studies have been scarce. This situation motivated the development of the present study which envolves the analysis of the supply function.

Two basic equations were fitted using the ordinary least square method and Nerlove's distributed lag model: one for rea harvested and another for yield.

In the area harvested equation, area harvested lagged one year, price of garlic, price of onions and a trend variable were used as the independent variables.

In the yield equation, lagged garlic and onion prices, average temperature, labor, a trend variable and a 'raide" variable were used as the independent variables. The "raide" variable represented the nunmber of farmers contacted through the "Raide de Alho" program. The results indicate that area harvested and yield elasticity with respect to price are 0.097 and 0.044 respectively, indicating that producers react to price incentives. Their reaction is more effective through area harvested adjustments than through yield increases. Supply price elasticity was 0.14 and area harvested elasticity was 0.32 in the long run. The adjustment elasticity was 0.30 wich implied that producers take five years to adjust to their land expectations. The supply price elasticity with respect to the competitive product (onion) was 0.103.

When a model with only the price of garlic and the alternative crop was used, the resulting RZ was 0.44. This was interpreted as indicating that the economic variables explained 44 percent of the total variation in the area harvested. Lagged garlic price, labor, temperature and trend were the relevant variables to explain yield variations. The obtained Rº was 0.45.

It is fair to say that the producer decides independently regarding area and yield increases. The price of the alternative crop does not interfere with the decision to increase yields.

There is a tendency for yields to increase over time. This was interpreted as an indication that technical assistence is influencing the productivity of thar crop.