Indicators of agricultural productive specialization to characterize municipalities in the state of São Paulo (Brazil)

Abstract

The general hypothesis of this research was that agricultural production presents itself unevenly in the territory with significant differences in productivity and financial income in terms of products. The objective of this work was to allow a more comprehensive knowledge of the characteristics of specialization and concentration of agricultural production based on sets of agricultural products weighted by their occupied area. The information from 621 São Paulo municipalities with agricultural production constituted a random vector, called financial contribution per hectare, formed by production variables and the total productive area of the municipalities. Using three indicators, they analyzed the municipal productive concentration. The degree of productive concentration per set of products demonstrated that the highest productive concentration was accompanied by greater profitability per hectare. The strong dilemma between diversification to dilute market risks and specialization to increase production efficiency was seen in all product sets.

Keywords: diversification, productivity, specialization