Relevance of management practices for support of Brazilian farming business growth and the regional development

The farmers spend much of their time with technical issues and routine tasks related to the production process. The administrative aspects of rural activities are usually relegated to a second plane. Thus, planning, information and knowledge acquisition, and development of strategies for relations with customers, society and collaborators ? employees or family members ? are harmed, which can compromise the activity. Empower the rural entrepreneurs to assimilate and apply concepts of competitiveness, quality and management, replacing the simple profit idea, is a challenge. The concern for quality management has grown continuously among companies from different economic sectors since the 1950s. For agricultural organizations, to create internal management mechanisms is also very important, from the improvement of agricultural processes to the placement of the product on market. This study analyzes the relationship between the management level of Brazilian farms with land structure, with production system,number of workers on the farm, county, producing region and with certification or not of production. To assess the management level in agricultural organizations ? farms ? we used the Method of Identification of Management Degree, MIGG, for coffee segments, cut flowers and horticulture, including hydroponic production in Brazil. The MIGG can contribute, in an organized manner, for making decisions as to structural changes, and to obtain superior quality products. The results obtained from questionnaires applied from 2010 to 2014 support the view that, despite the technical expertise in cultivation, the agricultural business management is still primitive and intuitive in most cases. In organizations with lower management degree, it was observed that the decision-making are not based on methods that enable a systematic reproduction of processes. In organizations where we have identified high levels of management, it was noted that management practices were integrated into modern farming practices, regardless of company size. In the coffee sector, with larger sample, we observed that in the West region of Bahia state, and in Cerrado region of Minas Gerais state, the management degrees are high and the production processes ? based on intensive use of modern technology ? are quite homogeneous and accompanied by very high yield and quality, compared to other coffee regions. Such practices have contributed to the increase of competitiveness of these organizations and to the development of those regions.