Dinâmica tecnológica da cadeia de frango de corte no Brasil: análise dos segmentos de insumos e processamento.

Abstract

This work tries to analyse technological dynamics of the slaughter poultry chain in Brazil, focusing on leader companies that participate in the input (genetic, medicament and animal nutrition) and processing segments. The consideration of these companies in the study is due to their representative national and international trade flow (in higher levels for processing companies); their importance in terms of trademark and products commercialized in the national market, their growing capacity and expansion in the internal and external markets, etc. That analysis is essential for the comprehension of poultry industry competitiveness in both internal and external markets, since Brazil s participation in world-wide poultry trade has increased. Such Brazilian position is due to several factors, highlighting: the way companies have been accomplishing product and process changes to fulfill international requirements as well as domestic comsumption standards; the way biosafety issues are considered in breeding; and the production cost advantages in relation to international competitors. Thus, it is attempted to analyse the nature of technological innovations adopted in each segment, that is, if they repesent meaningful changes in the whole production basis or if they only reflect in the improvement of existing standards. To do so, the working dynamics and the main agro-industrial agents are analysed, with emphasis to the international technological dynamics and the production and trade standards of the studied national segments. Based on that analysis, it is possible to verify that the Brazilian industry competitiveness is attached not only to technological and market standards, such as production advantages, but also to institutional factors, such as trade barriers, sanitary problems all over the world, among others. It is also analysed specific elements of technological dynamics, such as sources of internal and external information for innovation, means of companies technological learning, knowledge and techonology transfer mechanisms for innovation, in order to characterize companies technology strategies. That analysis was firstly accomplished for each company of the sample, which has resulted in an aggregate analysis for input and processing segments. Through those studies, it was possible to evidence that the evaluated segments have been developing important technological incremental innovations, as a result not only of external knowledge absorption by companies, but also of internal efforts of making available resources for R&D, new techonology development, difusion of internally created technologies to other companies of the group (in the case of multinational firms). Mainly, it was possible to evidence that such information and technology exchange does not occur isolatedly, but through an innovation net - among companies and other market agents - as a way of cutting off R&D costs, using relevant knowledge from public research agencies and also decreasing product launch-time.