Organic Agriculture： Socioeconomic Sustainability of Brazilian Coffee

作     者：Rubia Wegner Patricia Helena Nogueira Turco Faivia Maria de Mello Bliska 

作者机构：Institute of Humanities and Soeial Sciences Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro Seropddica 23890-000 Brazil Department of Decentralization of Development S6o Paulo Agency of Agribusiness Technology Agriculture Secretary of S6oPaulo State Campinas P.O. Box 28 S6o Paulo 13012-970 Brazil Coffee Centre Agronomic Institute S~o Paulo Agency of Agribusiness Technology Agriculture Secretary of S6o Paulo StateCampinas P.O. Box 28 S6o Paulo 13012-970 Brazil 

出 版 物：《Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology(A)》 (农业科学与技术（A）)

年 卷 期：2013年第3卷第1期

页      面：20-32页

学科分类：083002[工学-环境工程] 083001[工学-环境科学] 0830[工学-环境科学与工程（可授工学、理学、农学学位）] 08[工学] 

主　　题：Sustainable development coffee crop production costs organic agriculture. 

摘      要：Worldwide, there is a growing demand for products made by technologies that contribute to environmental preservation and to sustainable rural development. In Brazil, organic farming is one of the most established initiatives in this area. Therefore, it is important to subsidize the decision-making regarding policies for organic coffee production. Thereby, this study analyzed the socio-economic sustainability of this production system in relation to conventional. We applied a semi-structured questionnaire on coffee farms in the Brazilian coffee producers states and analyzed the coffee production cost structure. We identified the reasons that led the producers to organic management, implications of certification on the management, and prices received by organic coffee and the market mechanism. Results showed that there is no standard for organic coffee production and marketing in Brazil. Among the producers, there are different levels of access to technical information and the main limitation of the organic coffee chain is not the technology of production, but the difficulty of coffee marketing. Another important limitation, for medium and large farms, is the cost of manpower, mainly in areas dominated by mountain, where machines operations are not viable. Moreover, the yield of organic coffee system is generally lower than the conventional. Furthermore, soil and climatic differences lead to different regional behavior. Finally, we could conclude that the production of organic coffee can be sustainable in Brazil mainly in two structural conditions： 1） family farmers; and 2） small producers, who employ only one or two workers, preferably only in the harvest time.