Cooxupé and the adding value challenge: opportunities from the climate emergency

Abstract

Considering dynamic models of technological evolution and its impact on international trade, applied to the fundamental principles identified in Industrial Organization classic literature, it was possible to identify competitive advantages and strategies adopted by the big Brazilian agribusiness corporations to transnationalization. In the case of companies that reached direct sales in other markets, the “environmental niche” strategy was fundamental, establishing a series of certifications and territorial arrangements for land use and occupation in Brazil and validated through partnership/acquisition of companies in the country target, thus circumventing the trade protectionism applied to products of agricultural origin. These partnerships were achieved based on the market power of Brazilian companies, both as buyers (regional origination monopsony based on the offer of credit, technical guidance, inputs and storage), and as sellers (logistical efficiency in access to strategic ports). It is argued in this work that Cooxupé shares all these advantages, with an additional element: Coffee consumer markets are much more demanding and diversified, the product itself has greater specificity and variability, in addition to our competitors having less capacity to face the new demands imposed by demand in a context of growing concern about the effects of global warming.