Reestruturação produtiva e agroindústria: o grupo M. Dias Branco e a fábrica Fortaleza

Abstract

In the final years of the 20th century, Brazil began to integrate into the global process of capitalist restructuring, initiated in the late 1980s to overcome the crisis caused by the exhaustion of existing production methods. The process is based on flexibility to introduce new industrial production strategies. In the local context of the Fortaleza Metropolitan Region (RMF), among the various transformations proposed by this context, the industrial decentralization from the capital to the RMF stands out. The guiding question is: What are the socio-spatial impacts of the application of global productive restructuring strategies on the food agroindustries of the Fortaleza Metropolitan Region? Based on this, the aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of resizing and transformation of production strategies in food agroindustries on socio-spatial aspects in the Fortaleza Metropolitan Region, examining the objects and actions directed at the reproduction of capital in this sector and the repercussions on the dynamics of metropolitan space usage. Using the M. Dias Branco Group and Fábrica Fortaleza as a case study, this research also aims to understand, through these significant industry representatives, how the productive circuits of food agroindustrial production operate, examining the strategies and trends in response to exposure to a globalized market. This is a qualitative and quantitative research, and the methodological process was outlined to achieve these objectives, considering the following steps: a) bibliographic and documentary survey; b) creation of a thematic news archive; c) collection of statistical data; d) creation of maps; e) construction of graphs; f) fieldwork; g) interviews and application of questionnaires. Among the classic strategies of productive restructuring, industrial decentralization towards the metropolitan region, mechanization of production, and outsourcing of stages were identified. As parallel consequences of this process, the development of transportation infrastructure, transformations in housing dynamics, and the influence of labor qualification requirements on education systems were observed. The study also revealed unique strategies for the food agroindustry through the observations of M. Dias Branco and Fábrica Fortaleza, which adopt vertical integration of stages to optimize quality control and create new profit cycles with the expansion of manufactured products. Since eating behaviors are a variable that follows trends of the time and location in which they occur, strategies were also observed in the food agroindustry to keep up with this volatility, which has been increasingly amplified by the globalization of behaviors, fueled by current uses of the internet.