Concentración Regional Del Capital Productivo En La Industria Agroalimentaria Española

7Resumen:En este trabajo se trata, por un lado, de presentar la dinámica territorial del crecimiento de la industria agroalimentaria experimentada por el conjunto de la economía regional española, desde una óptica distinta a la que utiliza la teoría convencional. La atención se centra en la contrastación de la hipótesis sobre la concentración de la actividad productiva del sector agroalimentario planteada por la Nueva Geografía Económica, aplicándose a la localización espacial de actividades en las regiones españolas en el periodo 1980-2011. Por otro lado, se pone de manifiesto algunos de los factores que explican la concentración regional del stock de capital productivo de la industria agroalimentaria en las regiones españolas, tales como la eficiencia productiva regional, la localización y especialización de la mano de obra, el tamaño del mercado de consumo, el acercamiento a los mercados abastecedores de materias primas y la dotación territorial de infraestructuras.Abstract: In this paper, the aim is to present the territorial dynamics of the growth of the agri-food industry experienced by all the Spanish regional economies from a different perspective than the conventional theory. The focus is on contrasting the hypothesis about the concentration of productive activity in the agri-food sector raised by the New Economic Geography, applying it to the spatial location of activities in the Spanish regions in 1980-2011. On the other hand, according to the theoretical development about industrial location, this paper will consider the hypothesis that the regional location of the productive activities which make up the agri-food industry in Spain, is explained by the following factors: a) The agri-food production efficiency of the Spanish regions, so that the business location of this sector will be linked to the territories with higher employment productivity in the agri-food sector; b) The location and specialization of labour. According to it, the productive activity of this sector will be established in those regions with greater employment per head dedicated to the agri-food activity; c) The size of consumers market, whereby the implementation of companies in the sector under study will be given with more intensity in those regions with the highest population density; d) The approach to markets which supply raw materials, so that agri-food companies will tend to be located in those regions with greater presence of a predominant agricultural sector; and e) The territorial endowment of infrastructures, in the sense that the regions with higher level of infrastructures will be more prone to the location of a greater number of companies in general, and the one of the sector which has been in particular analyzed. It is interesting to note that the focus of this research differs substantially from most analyses carried out at the regional level in Spain. They have tried to study the evolution of the level of development of the regions based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross Value Added (GVA) per head, as well as the factors which explain the regional disparities in these variables. In this study, the regional growth of the agri-food sector will be analyzed from a different perspective, trying to identify factors that favor the geographic concentration experienced by the agri-food industry in the Spanish regions in the long period under analysis. Considering the scarce availability of statistical sources on the sector under analysis, for the evaluation of the productive efficiency of the agri-food sector, the evaluation of the productive efficiency of the agrifood sector is feasible by using an indicator of apparent labor productivity, related by quotient of Gross Value Added at the cost of factors (from now on GVAcf), being valued at constant 2000 prices, and the level of employment measured from the employed population in that sector. At the same time, in order to represent the competitiveness of the sector examined in this paper, this study has been supplemented by two additional elements, such as wage costs and export capacity. In order to have the appropriate statistical framework, the sources consulted for the period under analysis have been, on the one hand, the Agri-Food Statistics Yearbooks (2000-2008) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment ( http://www.mapama.gob.es/es/estadistica-/temas/publicaciones/anuario-de-estadistica/ ); on the other hand, the data offered by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) ( http://www.ine.es/ ) and the Institute of Statistics of Andalusia (IEA) ( http://www.juntadeandalucia.es:9002/ ); and lastly, the BD.MORES database of the Secretariat of Finance and Budget of the Ministry of Economy and Finance ( http://www.igae.pap.meh.es/sitios/sgpg/es-ES/Presupuestos/Documentacion/paginas-/bases-datosestudiosregionales.aspx ) and BBVA Foundation (2000), to obtain the surface of the Spanish regions ( http://www.fbbva.es ). The BD.MORES database presents the regional figures disaggregated to a level of 17 productive sectors, excepting the capital stock, which does so to a level of only 14 sectors. In order to homogenize the relations established between the variables used below, the disaggregation in 14 sectors has been decided. The methodology used to assess the territorial concentration of the agri-food sector has been given by the application of the Coefficient of Geographical Association of Florence and the breakdown of Theil Index. The influence of the elements considered in the regional concentration of the stock of productive capital of the agri-food industry has been estimated by means of a regression supposing, an autocorrelation scheme for the perturbations through a process AR(1). And lastly, an attempt has been made to assess the correlation between the territorial distribution of agri-food activity and the competitiveness index, established through an expression combining elements such as the apparent productivity of employment, export quotas measured through of percentage of sales destined to the foreign market and the cost per employee. The results obtained in the carried out analysis about the location of the business activities of the agri-food sector in the Spanish regions in 1980-2011 are presented below. The trend towards regional concentration of agri-food production in Spain does not seem to have been accentuated in recent years. In fact, a clear process of polarization has been maintained around four areas such as Catalonia, Castilla - León, Andalusia and Valencia, whose evolution placed them in the first places of the classifications which try to reflect the territorial hierarchy of wealth in the agri-food sector. The application of the Coefficient of Geographical Association of Florence, together with the decomposition of the Theil Index, allows us to observe how a weak process of geographic concentration of the agroindustrial monetary wealth occurs in the Iberian peninsula, whose reasons seem to have been favored by the evolution experienced by the capitalization of employment and hampered by the regional agglomeration of labor factors and population density. It seems that the productive efficiency, the capacity and specialization of the labor market, the size of the consumer market, the provision of productive public capital and the proximity to the commodity markets have been constituted as key elements for the agri-food business organizations to implement plants and productive equipment geographically in the Spanish regions. It can be affirmed that some of the factors, which have influenced the growth of the private productive capital of the agri-food industry in the Spanish regions, have been the evolution of jobs per head and the size of the consumer market. In this sense, if this premise is true, as seen with the data which have been explored, the differences that have been produced in the location of the population, generally assumed to be the regions with the highest level of development Economic, can become a crucial factor in the location of agro-industrial business activities in the future, which broadens the horizon of action for new research in this regard. Disparities in the regional localization of agrofood productive physical capital have been reduced in the three decades analyzed, accepting the beta convergence hypothesis applied to the used data. In this sense, it is plausible to think that territorial administrations, through sectoral policies and incentives, can and should play a crucial role in achieving the creation of a regional economic and socially stable environment which guides the decision-making of agri-food business organizations with respect to their location. It is therefore appropriate for the competent authorities to make an outstanding effort to ensure that all the Spanish regions are properly connected to each other and to the important economic areas of the European Union, through investments in infrastructure, in order to promote attracting productive agri-food ones which allow a growth of the level of economic development, intensifying these efforts in more depressed regions to help the regional convergence. The empirical evidence on the location of agroindustrial activities in Spanish regions, according to the used methodology, seems to accept the hypothesis raised by the New Economic Geography, which predicts phenomena of concentration and agglomeration of productive activities in those more developed territories economically, based on the assumptions of increasing returns and imperfect competition. It is necessary to emphasize that the carried-out analysis does not conclude here. There are still aspects that have not been incorporated, such as factors that favor the territorial concentratio n of the population, and that may undoubtedly be influencing business decisions to locate the agroindustrial sector, opening a new field of research that would need to be addressed. In addition, it is reasonable to think that the use of new databases, using even the same methodology used here, could corroborate the conclusions that have been made in this work. This would undoubtedly provide a consolidation of the analysis carried out, reinforcing the obtained results.