A Extensão privada e a privatização da Extensão: uma análise da indústria de defensivos agrícolas

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is, considering the environment of the Brazilian public agricultural extension crisis and the world trend to pluralization of agricultural extension systems, to study how agricultural pesticides industries plan, organize and deliver agricultural advisory services, associated to the sales of these products in Brazil. The research results showed that, in fact, these services have a strategic importance to the competitiveness of pesticides industries, which hire a significant amount of sales technicians and a diversified set of firms, through different kinds of contractual arrangements, composed of agricultural retailers, cooperatives and professionals that deliver such services to their clients, the farmers. The Brazilian agricultural extension system became official in years 70 and is characterized for being free of taxes to farmers and decentralized at the states level, with federal support. Such system faced a crisis at the eighties that culminated with the extinction of Embrater, on 1990. During the nineties the crisis persisted, with little support from state governments to its solution. The pluralization processes of agricultural extension models have been studied by foreign literature, with support from FAO and World Bank, but have received little attention in Brazil. The researched literature suggests that there are not unique and ideal models, and that pluralization of agricultural extension systems is the best way to attend diverse publics. The input and equipment supply industries are examples of agents that direct or indirectly deliver such services, associated to the sales of their goods. In Brazil such agents assumed a detached role, for their participation on the constitution of agroindustrial systems throughout the agriculture modernization process. Notwithstanding, the private extension services delivered by such industries, as by raw material processor industries, have not been much studied.