Determinantes da Escolha de Arranjos Institucionais: Evidências na Comercialização de Fertilizantes para Soja

Transactions among agribusiness agents are not exclusivelycarried out on the market, being also governed by alternative types ofinstitutional arrangements, some of which determined upon contractualagreement. In the fertilizers sector, the companies intensified the offerof input packages to farmers, more specifically to soybean producers,object of this article. In order to acquire the fertilizers, these producersmay choose to use their own financial resources, to obtain resourcesthrough financing with third parties, or they may recur to the saidpackages, which include soybean and financial resources in additionto the fertilizers, referred by the soybean producers to as “exchange”,since they acquire fertilizer paying with soybean for future delivery.Thus, the following questions motivate this work: What are the factorsthat determine the selection of the soybean producer between alternativearrangements for the acquisition of fertilizers? Two hundredinterviews were conducted with soybean producers in the States ofGoiás and Mato Grosso. To conclude, packages or arrangements asbundling may be stimulated by reasons of efficiency, with transactioncosts economy as one of these possible reasons. Risk aversion and trustleads to the use of the exchange arrangement. Finally, in relation to thescale, largest soybean producers use the arrangement exchange in agreat deal, differently from what was expected.