Avaliação das mudanças na política de garantia de preços mínimos: período de 1997 a 2004

This paper evaluates the main changes that happened in the Brazilian policies of agricultural minimum price since 1997, paying attention to operational issues and discrepancies among regions and products that occurred when implementing those policies. In 1996, Brazilian Federal Government created two new programs,Prêmio de Escoamento de Produto (PEP) and Contratos de Opções de Venda de ProdutosAgropecuários (COVPA), in addition to other two traditional programs (Aquisição do Governo Federal, AGF, and Empréstimos do Governo Federal, EGF). However, the new programs only were implemented one year after. Since then, these four Federalprograms of minimum prices have had different performances. This paper evaluatesthose differences, highlighting unequal distribution of these programs among productsand regions. COVPA is concentrated in corn crops, PEP favored cotton and AGF isbiased to rice and beans. Moreover, Center-Western states are favored in using theseprograms and Northern and Northeastern states little used these programs.