Elizabeth Maria Mercier Querido Farina

Agrifood Grades and Standards in the Extended Mercosur: Their Role in the Changing Agrifood System

is among the most important in terms of trade volumes in the developing world. It contains global powerhouses of agroindustry and agriculture, such as Brazil, ranked fourth worldwide, and Argentina and Chile, among the global frontrunners in meat and cereals, and fruit, respectively. Income growth and rapid urbanization are changing diets, increasing the importance of processed foods and nonstaples as Bennetts law predicts. The most important nonstaples (dairy, vegetablesfruit, meat, and coffee) have stringent export requirements with respect to G&S in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and Mercosur domestic markets are themselves becoming more demanding in this regard. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents definitions and theoretical hypotheses. Section 3 discusses policy and market determinants of changes in G&S, and highlights the importance of the emergence of privatized G&S. Section 4 hypothesizes that the changes in G&S are adding fuel to the forces of agrifood system concentration in the area. Section 5 concludes.

THE RISE OF PRIVATE FOOD QUALITY AND SAFETY STANDARDS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM BRAZIL

Over the past decade, the private sector has rapidly built up an array of private food standards to assure quality and safety in a fiercely competitive market. These private standards have sometimes been to fill in for missing public standards, especially for safety, and to differentiate products and build reputation, for both quality and safety. Moreover, private standards are increasingly related to meta-management systems assuring both quality and safety at all levels of a chain, enforcing and certifying the implementation of process standards. The privatization of standards has been important for both buyers and suppliers in the chain. They tend to be formulated and imposed by buyers (retailers and processors), and are key to their cost control and reputation with consumers, thus overall competitiveness. They are imposed on suppliers, who often find that the standards imply very substantial outlays for reporting, new equipment, and training. The lucky - a relatively small subset of the original set of suppliers - tend to find that meeting the standards, with formal certification in hand, benefits their business, opens new opportunities. The excluded tend to find themselves relegated to waning and unprofitable markets. The above points concerning the determinants and effects of the formulation and implementation of private standards are illustrated with cases from the dairy, coffee, wheat products, and coconut product chains in Brazil.

Strictly coordinated food-systems: exploring the limits of the Coasian firm

Firms are not islands but are linked together in patterns of co-operation and affiliation. Richardson, 1972 In the recent literature on supply chain management, vertical production systems are treated as independent entities operating under a given standard of coordination. If different production systems are not denominated firms, they are being treated as if they could be coordinated by some kind of agent holding sufficient hierarchical power. Moreover, different supply chains are presented as if they could compete with each other in the marketplace, inviting us to extend the concept of the typical firm. However, according to the Coase (1988) definition, “A firm consists of the system of relationships that comes into existence when the direction of resources is dependent on an entrepreneur.” When we deal with supply chains, the entrepreneur may or may not exist. Can supply chains be studied as independent entities? If so, can we interfere in their organization? What parameters must be considered to bind our actions toward the design of efficient systems? Provided that theories are abstract constructions designed to explain empirical regularities, we are looking for a scientific explanation for the empirical architecture and dynamics of coordination of supply systems. In this paper, we are particularly interested in supply-chain ma agement, which implies conscious interference. Therefore, it becomes necessary to develop a

Competitividade e coordenação de sistemas agroindustriais: um ensaio conceitual

Competitiveness has been in the lime light of the recent industrial policy debate. This article continues with the discussion about the concept of competitiveness applying it an agroindustrial systems. The concept, however, is far from a consensus and has been applied rather fuzzily from firms to nations. The paper applies the concept to agribusiness systems emphasizing the required assumptions and limits of the extended concept. Agribusiness system is defined as a contractual nexus among the economic agents who are involved in the production, transformation and distribution of agricultural products. The contractual approach allows to introduce explicitly the coordination of “inter-segments” as one of the factors f competitiveness. The Transaction Cost Economics and Industrial Organization Theory provide the theoretical framework of the paper.

Dynamics of Network Governance: A Contribution to the Study of Complex Forms

The focus of this paper is the architecture of complex forms of governance, specifically, the architecture of networks. A network is a complex form of organization designed to govern inter-firm transactions involving horizontal and vertical coordination. The agents choice among various institutional arrangements is affected by relation-specific investments, distributive mechanisms, and dynamic aspects based on relational contractual mechanisms, trust being a relevant variable. This paper investigates how horizontal and vertical coordination levels are connected. It recognizes that price incentives are important and introduces the effect of network externalities that also offer incentives. The paper presents a semiformal model that considers the existence of network externalities and applies a game approach to explain the choice among alternative strategies. The conceptual model is applied to two cases of network architecture in agro-industrial relations.

Scale, scope, and specialization effects on retailers procurement strategies: evidence from the fresh produce markets of São Paulo

Worldwide, the emergence of large supermarket chains in food retail markets is often associated with the marginalization of smaller retailers. A notable exception exists in Brazil, however, where small retailers have held their place in the market and recently even gained ground. The literature investigating how retail concentration has affected agrifood chains has focused activities of the largest retail chains, implicitly holding the scale, scope and specialization of retailers’ input needs constant, and overlooking the influence of these factors on retailers’ procurement strategies. This paper tests hypotheses regarding these variables’ effects on retailers’ fresh produce procurement strategies. Data is drawn from a survey of retailers in metropolitan SA£o Paulo. The research results provide insight into factors underlying retailers’ procurement strategy choices and tradeoffs among options. The results support the fundamental hypothesis of the paper that research on the competitive strategies of smaller retailers in a context of market domination by large retailers should not focus exclusively on the degree to which the smaller retailers imitate the larger retailers rather it should account for the possibility that the underlying characteristics of the retailers may make diverse competitive strategies appropriate.

Duas décadas da Norma Brasileira de Comercialização de Alimentos para Lactentes: há motivos para comemorar?

OBJETIVO: Avaliar o impacto da Norma Brasileira de Comercializacao de Alimentos para Lac tentes no cenario do aleitamento materno e na regulacao da comercializacao de formulas infantis. METODO: O artigo analisou dados de uma pesquisa de âmbito nacional realizada em 2000, na qual foram aplicados questionarios estruturados em nove tipos de publico-alvo. Foram rea lizadas 2 848 entrevistas em uma amostra selecionada aleatoriamente em 159 municipios, dis tribuidos nos 26 estados brasileiros e Distrito Federal, escolhidos por analise de conglomerado. RESULTADOS: A pesquisa mostrou uma percepcao adequada dos agentes quanto a importân cia e duracao ideal da amamentacao. A duracao mediana da amamentacao no Brasil aumentou nas 2 ultimas decadas, porem ainda se mostrou aquem do desejavel. Os fatores responsaveis pelo desmame precoce incluiram trabalho e saude precaria da mae, crencas sobre insuficiencia do leite materno e orientacoes de profissionais de saude. O conhecimento sobre a norma brasileira foi bastante restrito, mesmo entre profissionais de saude. CONCLUSOES: A promocao do aleitamento materno no pais deveria enfatizar a transcenden cia das barreiras culturais, educacionais e economicas identificadas nos agentes envolvidos. A acao coordenada entre agentes publicos, agentes privados e terceiro setor para a disseminacao da informacao e do desejo de amamentar e desejavel. A resistencia a consolidacao de parcerias deveria ser suprimida na busca de uma convergencia institucional em prol do interesse maior expresso no contexto da norma brasileira: a protecao da saude do lactente.

A Natureza Contratual de Plataformas de Dois Lados: nota de pesquisa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18836/2178-0587/ealr.v5n1p153-165

The present paper discusses the organizational nature of two-sided platforms. The article departs from the classical case of an industry that presents some intrinsic characteristics which give to it the status of a two-sided market. Specifically, the paper considers that the decision of a firm to operate as a traditional merchant or as a platform is based on a bargaining process between the firm and its suppliers, resulting in an incomplete contract which is supported by a particular combination of price and non-price instruments. Founded on this approach, this essay addresses some fundamental issues in the economics of hybrid forms in two-sided platforms through the examination of the decision of a supermarket to operate as a conventional retailer or as a platform.

Challenges to the coordination of Brazilian coffee agribusiness

This article analyses the challenges that pervasive deregulation and new consumer needs present to the Brazilian coffee agribusiness coordination. The transaction cost theory is the analytical device that provides support to deal with the inter-segment linkages expected to change. It is argued that as a commodity-oriented sector, the coffee agroindustrial system has been primarily coordinated by market price signals, but as a consumer-oriented business new forms of coordination will be required besides the price system. ©1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.