Public irrigation and fruit exploitation in the Brazilian Semiarid

Abstract

Public irrigation policy in Brazil aims to promote socioeconomic development focusing on economically disadvantaged regions that have agricultural potential. In the Northeast region, comprising 90% of public irrigation projects in Brazil, fruit exploitation plays an important role in the production of these projects. Such activity corresponds to an important portion of national production and is essential tool for income distribution, especially considering small and medium producers participating in these projects. In this sense, the objective of the study is evaluates the impact of the institutional presence of public irrigation projects on the value of fruit production, located in the semiarid region of Ceará, Pernambuco, Bahia and Minas Gerais states. The methodology used was that of policy evaluation using the Propensity Score Matching method combined with entropy weights in order to make the sample more homogeneous. The data used are from the Census Agricultural of 2017 (IBGE).The results showed a positive and statistically significant effect of the institutional presence of irrigation projects on the value of fruit production in the studied region. The cost-benefit analysis via educated guess reported that, for each unit of Real invested by the government in public irrigation policy in the Northeast, there was a return of R$ 12,88, which justifies public spending. The conclusive direction was to improve the use of idle irrigable areas in order to create opportunities for local development, notably in a historically vulnerable region, both in natural resources and in economic conditions of low employment and income.