Agribusiness participation in brazilian GDP and its dependence on the road system to transport the products

Abstract

An issue that has been discussed a lot in the last four years in Brazil is the fact that the country is experiencing a recession and the recovery of this scenario might take about a decade. During this period, economic activity was affected, reflecting the GDP result that registered a decrease between the years 2014 and 2016. However, among the sectors that make up the national GDP, the agribusiness remained consistent, and it has presented, against the other sectors, a growth of production. This paper aims to provide pieces of information that support the importance of agricultural production to constitute the Brazilian results and how the sector suffers from the lack of investments in terms of transportation mainly when applied to transport the products. Authors of influence in the economic field and data of agricultural sector controlling associations were used to base the development of this study and to demonstrate the origins of the transport infrastructure that nowadays is utilized in the country. Applying the case study methodology, it was possible to identify the political-economic factors that have been influencing, over the last decades, the way that Brazil transports its production and how this interferes in the competitiveness of the products, especially regarding cost, which subsequently determines the final price.