Vanessa Cristina dos Santos

Analysing the agricultural sector in Brazil we can observe its importance in creating job opportunities besides the production of food and raw materials for the industrial sector; as well as its fundamental contribuition to the positive export-import balance and the general development of the country. Therefore, one important factor in this sector of economy, that shows little differentiation, is the gain of productivity. The agricultural sector in Brazil, considering many modern studies, shows the elevation of its productivity. Although, we can see disparities between states and cities throughout the country. In this thesis we have analysed some cities of the State of Paraná (in the South Region of Brazil), more specifically the Associação dos Municípios do Setentrião Paranaense (AMUSEP), using partial indicators of productivity and one indicator of technical efficiency, this one based in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results were related to material that gave origin to the soil (MOS) and the agricultural activities developed in the cities. Based on the results we have got evidence on the increasing rate of the partial indicators of land - farming productivity (IPPTL), land - livestock (IPPTP) and labor (IPPL) for the AMUSEP region, in the period of 1970 and 1995/96, and on the other hand the fall of capital productivity (IPPK) for that Association. Based on IPPTL and IPPTP we cannot say there is a significant relation between MOS and the partial indicators and technical efficiency. We observed that the agricultural activity has influency in the productive efficiency or productivity and also technical efficiency does not depend on the MOS.