Business associations among the fruit and vegetable production units of the 4 TH colony micro region: possibilities and challenges

Abstract

The objective of this work is to verify the interest, among the farmers from the fruit and vegetable production units of the 4 th Colony micro region in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in participating in associations or cooperatives, which would allow them to participate in the increasingly competitive markets. A structured questionnaire, built in Likert scale, was applied through interviews to all the producers of the districts that best represented the socioeconomic and environmental conditions of the studied micro region. The data were treated with factorial analysis, descriptive statistics and rank tests. A pre-disposition to create company associations was observed among most of the producers; nevertheless, some important elements (for instance awareness and management tools) must still be elaborated in order to implement these associations, especially in one of the studied districts.