Local Productive Arrangement and the Family Agroindustries of the Region of Missões: Different Logics?

Abstract

In the region of Corede Missões, family agroindustries were constituted with the support of the public sector and institutions with which they relate and develop their productive activities. Since the year 2014, the region of Missões has been implementing the Local Productive Arrangement Development Plan of the Family Agroindustry, which, in essence, has a theoretical and historical origin in neoclassical economic theory, which reproduces the logic of the industrial economy. With this in view, the purpose of this study was to analyze how the production of family agroindustries in the region of Missões is influenced by the industrial logic of the concept of Local Productive Arrangement. We reached our objective through field research, that was based on theoretical reference on local productive arrangements and family agroindustry. We identified that the productive activity is, mainly, artisan. The logic of economies of scale, intrinsic to the theoretical model of APL, cannot establish a relation with the productive dynamics of family agroindustries, since they have low production, absence of division of labor and specialization. Thus, the attempt of industrialization takes away the essence of family activity by which families produce their products in an environment where there is no predominance of technique over know-how. The intention is that this study can serve as an interpretation that goes beyond the concept of Local Productive Arrangement (APL) and, at the same time, serves as a basis for the construction or improvement of public policies that better contemplate the reality of the production of family agroindustries.