Degree of maize production concentration in tile South-Central region of brazil

Abstract

Environmental and socioeconomical factors influence the geographical localization of agricultural activities as well as its performance and development potential. This paper reports on the study to analyse the degree of maize production concentration in the South-Central region of Brazil. This study is based on the hypothesis that agricultural activity in an homogeneous environment should have a greater degree of dispersion. The analysis is based on the premise that in such environments it is likely to occur greater and more uniform development, within a set of social-economic factors. The macroagroecological region division of Brazil is used to estimate Gini indexes for the different environments of maize production. The results show a stronger concentration in the Central-Western region, considering either geopolitical boundaries or macroagroecological division. Greater dispersion was observed in the Southern region. The results support the hypothesis that maize production is more disperse in the macroagroecological zones where production is greater than in the state where the zone is inserted.