O Desafio Da Estruturação Da Cadeia Produtiva Do Amendoim No Semiárido Do Nordeste

Peanuts production in Brazil is strongly concentrated in the State of São. This situation calls the attention aiming to understand the possibilities of strengthening the supply chain in this region. The targets of this paper are to describe peanut supply chain in the region of Itaparica System between the States of Bahia and Pernambuco and to come up with suggestions to strengthen local farmers’ position in this supply chain. This is a qualitative paper based on primary data. Participative observation and non-structured interviews were used as data collection tools. This work is one of the outcomes from the research project “Peanuts Production System in São Francisco Valley, Brazil”, led by Embrapa Algodão and Noble Agri. Nowadays this supply chain is built to trade a specific kind of peanut named “amendoim verde” (pre-matured or fresh peanut) in small scale and based on a very rudimentary production system. Key to strengthen this supply chain is to support it in delivering a wider sort of fresh and processed products and in increasing volume and improving frequency. To this end, four actions are suggested regarding to the following fields: production technology, financing, logistics and associative/cooperative forms of organization.