Analysis of Seasonal Behavior, Cycle Occurrences and Price Trends of Brazil nut Products Exported from Brazil

The exploitation of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) represent a way of subsistence for Amazon extractive communities, which demonstrate great recognition of its importance to income generation, notably in rural areas. This paper aims to identify and analyze the existence of seasonal behavior, cycle occurrence and price tendency upon Brazil nuts products (Bertholletia excelsa H.B.K.) exported by Brazil to international market during 2005 to 2015. Products quantity and price database were collected from Foreign Trade Information Analysis System (AliceWeb) and used as proxy to estimate its unit price in US$/kg. Deflated by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), using as reference base December 2015, the analysis consisted on applying the Mobile Geometric Mean (MGM) and the ARIMA econometric models. The evaluation of cycles and tendency were realized by graphic analysis of the stationary indexes, visual identification of structural series breaks and plotting reference value to analyze the occurrence of increase or decrease price. Because of the models application a seasonal price behavior was observed for both Brazil nuts products analyzed, shelled and in shell. Although the tendency of price growth was verified for both, the in shell products presented short term annual cycles, while for the shelled product only three long term cycles with distinct intervals were noticed.