Growth sources of sugar cane production and the proposition of a sectorial policy in Alagoas

Abstract

This article aims to identify the sources of growth of sugar cane production in state of Alagoas, Brazil, from 1990 to 2010. Thus, this study used the shift-share model, which attributes this growth to three factors: the area effect, the yield effect, and the geographical location effect. The results point to the exhaustion of the sugarcane production system in Alagoas, since the indicators of the shift-share model, in general, proved to be unstable concerning the trend. However, the average annual growth rate of sugarcane production was positive, and the yield effect was the main factor for this result. The area effect produced negative results, due to the reduction in the harvested area in the studied period. The geographical location effect produced positive results, but with little representativeness, because the process of changing the production from the state’s coast to the tablelands occurred in the 1980s. Finally, the study suggests a technological and industrial sectorial policy in order to improve the production of sugarcane and its coproducts in other production bases – not based only on the scale of plants and comparative advantages in the production of sugar and ethanol.