Apicultura no Estado do Ceará: competitividade, nível tecnológico e seus fatores condicionantes, produção e exportação de mel natural

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to study the production of Apis mellifera's honey in the State of Ceará. It was considered social, economic, technological and of competitiveness aspects. The research was accomplished in the Municipal districts of Santana do Carini and Crato (in the Carin region), Pacajus, Chorozinho, Limoeiro do Norte and Alto Santo (in the region of Baixo Jaguaribe) and Mombaça (in the Senador Pompeu region). It was used secondary data from research institutions and the primary data was obtained from interviews with beekeepers. In order to characterize social and economic profile were used the following variables: age, civil status, instruction degree, residence place, home condition, access to the technical attendance, participation in social organizations and access to financing. To identification of the technological level were considered technologies of equipments, handling, crop, powders crop and administration. For this, indexes were produced for each one of the individual technology and group of them. It was produced a general technological index and an average of the all of them. The influence of social and economic beekeepers' variables in the probability of adoption of technologies was estimated by the model Probit. The profitability and competitiveness analysis considered the revenues and the production costs, as well as profitability indicators. The principal results indicate low percentile of young beekeepers, with high instruction, little access to the technical attendance and high participation in social organizations. On average, the beekeepers interviewees use 60.13% of the recommended technologies. The crop technology contributed substantially to the composition of the general technological index. The smallest contribution was referred to the technology of the administration. Technological level, instruction degree, access to technical attendance, access to credit and degree of importance of the activity was identified as restrictive variables to the beekeeping. This is a quite profitable activity in Ceará. The technological level was a decisive factor of the beekeepers' competitiveness. Technological innovations are indispensable to the earnings of competitiveness of that sector.