Banca de DEFESA: LUCIANA FREITAS DE ANDRADE

THE EFFECT OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES ON BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON THE 2017 AGRICULTURAL CENSUS

Sustainable Agricultural Practices, Production Theory, Agricultural Production, Agricultural Establishments.

The objective is to verify the contribution of sustainable agricultural practices to the performance of the Brazilian agricultural sector, in addition to measuring the contribution of production factors (work, capital, land and inputs) considering each sustainable agricultural practice and verify the effect of each sustainable agricultural practice in the gross value of production. The production theory represented mathematically by a Cobb-Douglas production function was adopted in order to identify its effect. And to verify the effects of sustainable agricultural practices, an equation will be estimated for each type of cultivation technique using the Ordinary Least Squares Method.

The data used in this work comes from the 2017 Agricultural Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE. The units of analysis will be the 5,564 Brazilian municipalities. To estimate the production function, the gross value of agricultural production in 2017 in reais was chosen as the product variable. Production factors were represented by the following variables: cultivation area in hectares encompassing crop, livestock and agroforestry areas; capital goods represented by machines, tractors and equipment for agricultural establishments; number of people employed in agricultural establishments and agricultural inputs including pesticides, fertilizers, seeds and seedlings, pesticides, fertilizers and veterinary products. The variable of interest, cultivation technique, was selected because it represents sustainable agricultural practices developed by rural producers. As well, regional dummy variables representing the five Brazilian regions were inserted into the regression model.

As results, the variables work used, machinery, cultivated area and inputs used were statistically significant and presented positive elasticity coefficients for all sustainable agricultural practices mentioned in the model, indicating that the sustainable agricultural technique used contributed to the efficient use of production factors.

The results showed that aggregate agricultural practices contributed to an increase in the gross value of production of agricultural establishments in Brazilian municipalities, indicating that replacing conventional agricultural practices with sustainable agricultural practices is capable of bringing financial returns to the Brazilian rural sector. Highlighting the cultivation techniques, level planting and crop rotation, which presented positive and statistically significant coefficients.

As benefits for a greater number of establishments that adopt sustainable agricultural practices, they can cite the reduction in the use of inputs that are costly and harmful to the environment by inputs that are beneficial to the environment, in addition to increasing the supply of healthy products contributing to the health of the population. population and price reduction. Sustainable agricultural practices contribute to the environment and despite being little used within the total number of agricultural establishments, they were able to generate income for rural producers who made use of their methods.