Coffee Production: An Analysis of Opportunities for Competitiveness

This study involved rural properties of the Brazilian Cerrado, which are necessarily consistent with the requirements of good agricultural practices for quality, innovation, and technology in the production and management of properties. Based on the knowledge and information as value-added production factors, we sought to highlight the opportunities for improving competitiveness, and thus a review of the literature on competitiveness, knowledge, and information as a differential factor for production with added value, innovation, and territorial technology as well as entrepreneurship. With the data from the field study, the objective was to show how knowledge and information, applied in production and social capital, can leverage competitiveness. The analyzes carried out using AHP indicate that some initiatives already aid in the promotion of innovation and technology applied to production, making it necessary, however, to encourage knowledge and information among producers and other stakeholders collectively, for the best costs and results. They also point to the low concern of producers with training and other productivity improvement techniques, such as selective harvesting. Authenticated that the producers opt for the sale of their production via commodity, aiming to profit quickly. Reasons for this are, in the non-perception of value added (sales in commodity); in the absence of rural structure for the processing and harvesting of the coffee required for special sale; in the precariousness of collective export agents (cooperatives are dependent on traders) and deficiencies in management for positioning in the properties (most work in scale).