Actual changes in the sugar cane chain: challenges and directions for Growers associations

Brazil is a country moved by agribusiness, being among the leading suppliers of many products in the world such as sugar, orange juice, beef, soybeans, poultry meat and others. This assertion is evidenced by the numbers of its trade balance. In 2012 the Brazilian trade balance had a surplus of $ 19.5 billion. This amount includes all participating industrys of the national economy, however, when is considered just the trade balance of Brazilian agribusiness, the surplus was about $ 80 billion in the same year, which makes clear the high importance of agribusiness in the Brazilian economy (BRASIL?, 2013). The sugar cane industry specifically, is currently experiencing a period where production costs have risen and the growers income as well as sugar millers income have decreased, due to the depressed prices of ethanol and the volatile price of sugar as usual, coming to presure the sugar cane chain as a whole. Considering sugar cane production, there are different ways how sugar cane is produced, being own production from sugar cane mills (on their own lands or rented lands) normally within large areas and and the production from independent sugar growers of varios sizes and technical levels. Particularly, the independent sugarcane growers, with less scale power, have suffered from this economic context and have tried as a solution to imporve his results, a better cost management, either through better negotiations or better crop management, and along with these efforts, by increasing his productivity.Concomitantly, one may suggest that the associativism (a collective action among sugar cane growers) must be a way to solve this set of problems since the growers groups gain strength for better negotiations, scale to reduce costs and share techniques that provide increased productivity (CONEJERO, 2011; OSLON, 1999). The purpose of this article was to discuss how collective organizations have been affected by changes occurring in the political, economic and social environments and how they could position themselves to face such changes, strengthening the association role of maintaing profitably the sugar cane grower within the sugar cane chain. In this article was performed a discussion of the main issues that the Brazilian sugar cane chain is facing and how growers organizations can help the independente grower to maintain its activity. The results show actions and directions that a grower association may take considering its internal and external analizys.