Proposta de modelo de estrutura do custo logístico do escoamento da soja brasileira para o mercado externo: o caso do Mato Grosso

Abstract

Soybean is one of the most important commodities in Brazil, contributing positively to the growth in Brazilian trade balance. Although the country has strong comparative advantages in relation to land availability, productivity, and costs of production, these competitive advantages start to weaken whilst the product is burden by poor logistics infrastructure in Brazil. All logistical bottlenecks are reflected in costs for the producer and loss of competitiveness for Brazil. However, it is of paramount importance to be acquainted with the logistics structure and its bottlenecks as well as fixing the costs associated with the movement of goods and their further quantification seeking to propose solutions in order to minimize costs and losses. This paper aimed to define a logistics cost framework of the soybean crop logistics flow to cover the external demand. Secondly, it has also sought to stimulate a debate on the characteristics of soybean product and its logistics process. The proposed model presented herein was applied in three supply flows taking into account both unimodal and intermodal routes. The adoption of such a method has encouraged debates about critical issues including the intermodality. Thus, this paper demonstrates that, due to a number of factors, it is not always beneficial the logistics flow employing a range of modals.