“SUGARCANE, SUGAR AND ETHANOL” INFORMATION AGENCY:
SOCIAL AND ECONOMICS IMPACTS
MARCELO MIKIO HANASHIRO1
CARLOS EDUARDO DE FREITAS VIAN2
MARCIA IZABEL FUGISAWA SOUZA3
FABIO RICARDO MARIN4
BEATRIZ CARROMEU LEITE5
MARTHA DELPHINO BAMBINI6
RESUMO
A cadeia produtiva da cana-de-açúcar não dispõe, atualmente, de um sistema de
informação que atenda às necessidades e interesses, sobretudo, dos seus produtores e
agentes da assistência técnica. Diante desta constatação, a Embrapa Informática
Agropecuária em parceria com a APTA-Pólo Regional Centro-Sul de Cana-de-Açúcar,
o Centro de Ciências Agrárias/UFSCar, o Cepagri/Unicamp e a Esalq/USP propuseram,
em 2006, um projeto de estruturação e organização do conhecimento dessa cadeia
através da construção de um sistema on-line gratuito, denominado “Agência de
Informação da Cana-de-açúcar: açúcar e álcool”. O presente artigo tem por finalidade
analisar os impactos socioeconômicos previstos (ex-ante) deste Projeto. A metodologia
de avaliação de impactos adotada no estudo foi desenvolvida pela Embrapa, para
avaliação dos impactos socioeconômicos, ambientais, de geração de conhecimento,
capacitação técnica e organização político-institucional, das ações de pesquisa e
tecnologias desenvolvidas por esta Instituição. A análise do projeto apresentou os
impactos a seguir, em função da organização e difusão do conhecimento ao longo da
cadeia produtiva: a) impactos sociais previstos: inclusão digital de produtores, melhoria
de condições de trabalho e inclusão social no campo, aumento no número de empregos;
b) impactos econômicos previstos: aumento de produtividade, redução de custos da
produção, agregação de valor e otimização dos processos produtivos. Conclui-se, assim,
que os impactos socioeconômicos previstos a partir da disseminação de informações
estratégicas a todos os agentes da cadeia justificam a divulgação do Projeto Agência de
Informação da Cana-de-açúcar em Eventos atinentes do agronegócio, sempre que
possível.
SUMMARY
Nowadays, in Brazil there is no information system related to the sugarcane productive
chain that supplies the needs and interests of producers, rural extension agents, policy
makers and business related sectors. Focusing this lack of information, Embrapa
Informática Agropecuária, a Research Unit of Brazilian Corporation of Farming and
Cattle Research, and partners such as Agência Paulista de Tecnologia dos Agronegócios
– APTA, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, Centro de Pesquisas
Meteorológicas e Climáticas Aplicadas à Agricultura – Cepagri/Unicamp and the
Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz – Esalq/USP, developed togheter since
1
Master: Economic Development - Embrapa Informática Agropecuária – [email protected]
PhD: Economist – Departament of Economics, Administration and Sociology / Esalq/USP – [email protected]
3
Master: Information Science - Embrapa Informática Agropecuária – [email protected]
4
PhD: Physics of the Agricultural Environment – Embrapa Informática Agropecuária – [email protected]
5
Student: Agricultural Engineering - Feagri/Unicamp – [email protected]
6
Specialist: Administration - Embrapa Informática Agropecuária – [email protected]
2
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2006 a project to structure, organize and make available the knowledge regarding the
sugarcane, sugar and ethanol related information. The present article, beside to describe
the agency structure, aims also to analyze its ex-ante social and economics impacts. To
evaluate the impacts, it was used the methodology developed by Embrapa, in order to
assess social, economic and environment effects derived from research and
development actions. The knowledge organization and diffusion may provoke some
benefits such as: digital inclusion of the producers, improvement of work conditions,
social inclusion in the field area; yield increase, cost reduction and value and quality
aggregation along the productive process.
KEY-WORDS: social and economic impacts, ex-ante impacts, sugarcane, agroenergy,
organization of the information, knowledge management.
1. INTRODUCTION
The publication of scientific results in reports like Social Analysis, Institutional
Management and Impacts of Technologies Studies, among others vehicles, gains force
and prestige to the Public Institutions of Research and in the private companies. This
initiative offers to society an overview of the results reached by the research in public
institutions and also detaches the actions that have been emphasized in order to orient
the policy makers and drive public policies. This kind of documents registers the
activities that had been developed, the investments and the verified financial return in
an objective way, justifying the environmental and social commitment made. Recently,
the analysis of impacts gained special attention with the global warming discussion, the
incentive to the agroenergy production and the increase of the agricultural areas
(Girardi, 2007; Barros, 2007; CULTURA..., 2007), especially regarding environmental
questions and consequences of the human action.
In conceptual terms, "impact” refers to the broad, long-term economic, social and
environmental effects resulting from research. Such effects may be anticipated or
unanticipated, positive or negative at the level of the individual or the organization.
Such effects generally involve changes in both cognition and behavior. Evaluation is the
judging, appraising, or determining the worth, value or quality of research, in terms of
its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and impact (FAO, 2000).
Ávila et al. (2006) establishes guidelines to the elaboration of the report of impacts
emphasizing the social, economic and environmental perspectives. There are other
parameters regarding the knowledge, qualification and institutional politics, strongly
based on Furtado (2003), but in this analysis, they will not be studied.
Nowadays, the ex-ante study impacts have gained more importance and makes possible
its accompaniment ex post. Evaluation ex-ante makes possible the planning and the
prioritizing of proposals and actions, presenting the potential results decurrent of
institutional actions and investments of resources. “Looking towards the future, there is
ex-ante impact assessment of likely future environments and of expected impacts from
research. Ex-ante impact assessment is applied to assist in decisions on approval and
funding of research and is generally done at a project level. However, at a research
system level, ex ante impact assessment is also conducted to rank research programs
and set priorities for resource allocation purposes” (FAO: 2000, 4).
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2. OBJECTIVE
This paper aims to assess the impacts expected by the “Sugarcane, Sugar and Ethanol”
Information Agency, considering the social and economic scopes, following Ávila et al.
(2006).
3. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Souza (2006) reports that the productive chain of the sugarcane is very important and
complex, but does not have any information system that attends the interests and the
necessities of the producers of sugarcane and the professionals of technical assistance,
mainly. In the past, this need was supplied by publications of the Instituto de Açúcar e
Álcool (IAA), and its Magazines “Anuário Açucareiro” and “Brasil Açucareiro”, where
these professionals found all the statisticians, new technologies, sectorial legislation and
technical articles (Vian and Corrente, 2005). After the extinguishing of the IAA, these
functions have stopped. Nowadays, there were publications directed to the sector, but
with journalistic content.
Embrapa already makes use of new tools and methodologies that congregate, organize,
systemize and offer the access on-line, using the web, to any set of information:
“Sugarcane, Sugar and Ethanol” Information Agency (Fig. 1) is about the system
developed by the Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, in partnership with the Embrapa
Informação Tecnológica, to organize and to characterize the information under the
hierarchic structure "knowledge-tree" (Santos et al., 2005a, 2005b; Alves et al., 2005).
This tool permits the access on-line to the existing technological information on the
culture of the sugarcane (fig. 2). This hyperbolic tree is a technique of visualization and
navigation on web that makes possible the organization of the information in hierarchic
way, presenting the data in ramifications. Thus, the available information on web can be
accessed more efficiently than the traditional navigation for hiperlink, offering to the
user a global vision of the structure of the site, without losing the context information.
The Project’s public is constituted by: research institutions; research and support areas;
Universities and other educational institutions, extension and technical assistance
companies, agencies of promotion and funding agencies, and agriculturists. Therefore,
the Government comes back to execute with consistency its role of generator of
information and technology.
Fig. 1: screen of the “Sugarcane, Sugar and Ethanol” Information Agency
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Fig. 2: the hierarchic structure "knowledge-tree"
To measure the social, economic and environmental impacts generated by products,
technologies and processes from research in agribusiness, Embrapa has used a
methodology developed by Ávila et al. (2006). The economic impacts were evaluated
following the economic excess approach. The methodology of the economic excess
used to evaluate the economic impacts of the technologies developed at Embrapa
analyses basically the kind of impacts that can be measured by income increases derived
from the increase of productivity, costs reduction, areas expansion, and value
aggregation. However, there are technologies that cannot be measured by these
indicators, being necessary to use other methods, depending on the information to be
obtained (Ávila el al., 2006).
About social impacts, diverse types are expected, negative or positive. To evaluate the
social impacts, Rodrigues et al. (2005) developed the Ambitec model that consists of
modules of indicators integrated for analysis of the social performance of agribusiness.
The Ambitec-Social module was developed in spreadsheet in the Platform Microsoft
Excel, with the aspects employment, income, health & management and administration
been evaluated (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Employment indicators spreedsheet (Source: Rodrigues et al., 2006)
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4. EVALUATION OF EX-ANTE IMPACTS AND DISCUSSION
By the application of the methodology described above (Fig. 4), the following social
impacts could be assessed focusing on the primary sector and the agents of extension:
1) digital inclusion of the agriculturists: it is a direct expectation of the implementation
of “Sugarcane, Sugar and Ethanol” Information Agency, regarding “qualified local
employment” and ”professional qualification”. The agriculturist will be able to
incorporate new knowledge regarding to the use of the technology of information,
through the access of the website content. This will contribute for the effective transfer
of qualified technological information by the internet;
2) improvement of the conditions of work in the productive chain of the sugarcane, in
special in the field, through the dissemination of information, practices and politics that
allow to adjust and to discipline the operations of plantation and harvest of the
sugarcane, using the man power legally correct. This aspect focuses the employment, in
the question offer and work condition, and quality of the employment (labor law and
benefits) and also has strong interface with the environment question (especially the
“queimadas”- the burning actions in the cut of the sugarcane);
3) the increase of the number of employments due to the attendance of new business
opportunities by the agents and using institutions of the system: it is an impact of
economic and social reach that is related to the previous question. With better
knowledge of the functioning of the sugarcane market, the agriculturist can become
more competitive and contract human resources of more steady form and insurance
during the year, also to the planning of the "harvest" and its commercialization. On the
other hand, this item is related to the aspects level and type of qualification of the
Ambitec, therefore - even for the information technology - the agriculturists and its
employees will have to be more able in technician terms, and the rural extension
professionals, also;
4) these three social impacts mentioned before are related to the increase of social
inclusion levels, affecting together indicators like as employment, income, health and
management & business administration.
About the assessed economic impacts, they are the following:
1) increase of productivity, from the spreading of innovations and information for all
the productive chain of the sugarcane: economic indices, estimated costs, adapted
genetic materials, existing different systems of productions, machines and new
techniques of planting and harvesting, and many others;
2) reduction of production costs, from the best control of quantities of agricultural
fertilizers and defensives, explanations of relations within the different segments of the
chain, offering of the best techniques used in the field and in the industry, derived of the
information available in the “knowledge-tree”;
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3) value aggregation of the products, decurrent of spreading of strategic information like
times of better prices of the commodities sugar and alcohol, types of the products that
the consumers prefer (for example, organic sugar and other sugarcane products from
just and solidary commerce), organization of the whole strategy on the sugarcane
Brazilian chain;
4) improvement of the productive processes, preventing wastefulnesses, increasing the
productivity in the field and the industry, with more efficient, high precision and fast
systems (using the technology of information and to the agriculture of precision as
tools), reusing residues generated during the processing.
It seems to be some possible “negative” impacts: keeping or maybe increasing the
asymmetry of the bargaining power between the agents. It is prevented by avoiding
accumulation of information by any agent of the chain, especially in the aspect
management & business administration. So, the existence of this technology must be
communicated to all the users, especially together to the extension professionals and
agriculturists, and to the final consumer. In accordance with advancing of the Project,
new impacts could occur; the expected ones could suffer some adjustments in intensity
or sometimes, or actually do not occur at all. Then, the ex-post analysis may support the
argument in relation of the adoption of this web-based technology.
However, there were many relations between social, environmental and economic
aspects, decurrent of impacts in economic structures and processes, including enterprise
activities, changes in the employment levels, profits and incomes. Then, to have success
in this project, is necessary to have a well done development of the planning by the
managers of the Project (and Actions Plans), the effective envolvement of the specialists
in their topics and the absence of abrupt changes in the guidelines of the partners
institutions.
Fig. 4: Result of social impact evaluation spreedsheet (Source: Rodrigues et al., 2006)
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5. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
It is concluded that the set of impacts considered encloses some of the most important
aspects to be considered in projects of this nature (information technology). Moreover,
the social and economics impacts expected from the dissemination of strategic
information to all the agents of the chain justify the spreading of the “Sugarcane, Sugar
and Ethanol” Information Agency” in scientific events related to the agribusiness.
Finally, the evaluation ex-ante of the technology will make possible the comparison of
the expected social and economic impacts by the use of this tool based on Information
Technology (IT) with the results gotten for intermediary analysis realized in different
fronts and localities, and taking in consideration the understanding of their
particularities. Then, it is intended, until the ending of the activities of the Project (expost analysis), to elaborate periodic evaluations of follow up. Also, it can be included
other types of impacts, in subsequent analyses. Our thesis is that this technological tool
can assist the process of management of the sugarcane production chain with
information, stimulating the participation and the involvement of the agriculturists,
agents of extension, students, professors and other users, in these new functionalities. It
is expected that the impacts related in this document will justify the continuity of the
actions initiated in the scope of this project in the long stated period.
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