JOAQUIM JOSÉ MARTINS GUILHOTO

Title

Economic, Social and Environmental Aspects of Agriculture and Agribusiness in Brazil.

Abstract

The agribusiness takes into consideration the relations between the agriculture production and the other sectors in the economy (inputs for production, industry, transportation, distribution, and commercialization). The agribusiness has a share of about 24% in the total Brazilian GDP, but regional difference makes this average to oscillate between 5% and 60% in the Brazilian states. There is also a difference between small familiar production and large scale production which vary according to the commodity and the state. Also important is the relation between land distribution and the type of agriculture. At the farming level, it is observed that poverty afflicts considerable number of its producers. Among these, the family farms are of special concern.

There is also the existence of possible tradeoffs between policies direct to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) with the ones direct to foster the development of the Brazilian agriculture and agribusiness. In 2005 about 60% of the Brazilian GHGs emissions were due to the land-use change, most of it direct related to the production of agricultural goods. As a consequence, the burden of the reduction in the GHGs emission could be imposed mainly on agribusiness and poor farmers.

In this direction, the present study tries to make a connection among economic, social and environmental aspects of agriculture and agribusiness in Brazil.

Short Bio

Joaquim J.M. Guilhoto is a Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. In 2010 he was a Visiting Professor at MIT. He was also Head of the Department of Economics at USP from 2005 to 2009. He holds a Ph.D. (1986) in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also associated with the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois. Previously he has held a position of Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, at the USP.

For more than 25 years he has been working as a researcher and professor, being specialized in structural analysis of the national and regional economies. The main economic tools used refer to input-output models and applied general equilibrium models. He has more than 250 works published nationally and internationally.

He is a member, among others, of the Brazilian Association of Regional Studies (ABER), Regional Science Association International (RSAI), International Input Output Association (IIOA), and the Brazilian Association of Rural Economics and Sociology. The Master and Ph.D. dissertations, already defended and advised by Prof. Guilhoto in his field of expertise are more than 25.