Certificações privadas como requisito de acesso a canais europeus de distribuição: o caso do GlobalGAP na manga do Vale do São Francisco

Abstract

This dissertation aims to verify the importance of GlobalGAP private certification to Vale do São Francisco’s mango productive chain access to the European Union retail networks. Assuming that supermarket networks from developed countries represent the main fresh fruit distribution channel and taking into account that these organizations play a decisive role on value chain governance, studies that propose to investigate the impacts from actions developed by this segment over its suppliers acquire great relevance. The fruit supply chain set beginning in developing countries and finishing at European Union presents peculiarities regarding power relations among segments and actor demands downstream that may be deeply explored by academic theories and approaches. This dissertation comes up with itself a discussion about the impacts generated by private certifications (specifically GlobalGAP) on the dynamic of Vale do São Francisco mango production flowing. For this, it was chosen as analysis tool two conceptual backgrounds: the Global Value Chain Theory and Agricultural Supply Chain Competitiveness concepts. The first theoretical instrument strives to study Global- GAP certification considering it as a result or consequence of power concentration (chain governance) by retail networks. The second conceptual approach arises to subsidize the discussions about the importance of these private protocols on the competitiveness of the productive region submitted to the standards established by the label. The data used to the development of the study were gotten from primary and secondary sources. The former source was explored through questionnaire application to important segments of the Vale do São Francisco’s mango productive sector. The latter source was obtained from mango commercial flow data, organizational aspects and world and Brazilian production numbers. The discussions were based on three elements: (1) technical information about the certification processes and the conceptual basis of GlobalGAP; (2) the adequacy of small farmers to the export reality taking into account private labels; (3) and the impacts of certifications over the Vale do São Francisco’s mango great exporter farmers. It was noticed that the irrevocable exigency from fruit importers about the necessity of GlobalGAP label created in the region a kind of clientsupplier relation between great and small farmers. The first ones, who have private certifications, complete their lots with fruits from small farmers. These relations and other nuances will be particularly discussed along this work.