Analysis of the bean agricultural production system in the state of São Paulo from a survey of agricultural production areas

Abstract

This study is aimed to characterize and analyze social, economic, productive, and technological aspects of the bean crop in two periods of time (2007/2008 and 2016/2017) from the Survey of Agricultural Production Units (LUPA). This work is original since it is the first analysis of quantitative data from LUPA for the characterization of bean cultivation in the State of São Paulo. As a result, we can see in 2016/2017 that bean cultivation was present in 9,187 Agricultural Production Units (APUs), totaling an area of 105,018 ha. Between the two agricultural years, these indicators revealed a reduction of 19.5% in the number of APUs and 2.0% in the cultivated area. These reductions may be associated with the water crisis and fluctuations in prices paid to bean producers, who opted for more profitable crops, such as corn and soybeans. Circumstances such as water scarcity and lack of labor caused an increase in areas with irrigated cultivation and the use of mechanized harvesting. In both periods, most producers had up to four fiscal modules in their properties and the income obtained by farming was more than 50% of the composition of family income, information that can characterize this activity as family farming. The results obtained showed the importance of organized and systematized information bases to understand both the bean agricultural activity and others, in addition to allowing the observation of the process of agricultural development in the State of São Paulo.

Keywords:
bean cultivation; legume; bean production chain; agricultural census; Brazil