Fair trade: alternativa ao mercado convencional de café e processos de empoderamento de cafeicultores familiares

• Ano de defesa: 2011
• Autor(a) principal: Pedini, Sérgio
• Orientador(a): Machado, Rosa Teresa Moreira
• Banca de defesa: Pereira, José Roberto, Antonialli, Luiz Marcelo, Saes, Maria Sylvia Macchione, Souza, Maria Célia Martins de
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Lavras
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração
• País: BRASIL
• Palavras-chave em Português: Mercado fair trade; Empoderamento; Certificação; Cafeicultores familiares; Grandes corporações; Fair trade market; Empowerment; Certification; Coffee small farmers; Large corporations
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: Administração
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufla.br/handle/1/3090

This work uses the concepts of New Institutional Economy and Economic Sociology to explain the arising of the Mercado Fair Trade - MFT (Fair Trade Market), specifically the one connected to the family-agriculture coffee trade business chain. The theoretical dimension of empowerment is presented as the distinguisher of the potential transformation that MFT can exert on certified organizations, subdivided in three levels: economical, psychological and cognitive. The aim was to assess how far MFT can modify the usual commodity coffee trade structure thus causing impact on the different actors in such production chain and, consequently, empower family coffee small farmers and their organizations. Specifically, this work studies the experimentation of a cooperative from the south of Minas Gerais state, one that is certified by the MFT and operating in the international market. In order to achieve the goal proposed, this work is based on bibliographical research and a field research, the latter being divided into a survey among coffee small farmers belonging to the organization under study and neighbor producers who are not affiliated under the same conditions, and a focus group featuring actors from the organizational environment of the cooperative. The results from the survey point out that only the cognitive aspects showed significant differences, thus enhancing the notion of the reality in which the farmers lives, individually, and his insertion in the debates of the environment in which the cooperative is inserted. The results from the work concerning the focus group do enhance the role of the MFT in the local organizational environment, under the scope of a net-like performance by the actors involved. One feature analyzed was the affiliation of large production and distribution corporations to the MFT and the inherent risk of loss of identity by that market as it draws away from its original principles. The conclusion reached is that the MFT tends to move towards consolidation, a process that was deflagrated with the incorporation of certification based on solid rules such as quality guarantee and traceability, now more than ever, as it begins to incorporate large economical corporations to the chain. Both the certifier and coffee small farmers must improve their skills, so as to keep track of such growth process. The criteria which solidify the MFT as a differentiated certification process with unique conventional market transformation features are what strengthen MFT as an alternative proposal. This paper points towards an urge for continuity in investigating, incorporating deeper studies on the economical-financial conditions of the participants as well as an investigation on the consumers, at the chain final link, as for the guiding principles of the MTF.