Work Package 4

EU-Mercosur agri-food systems comparison

Objectives

Analysis of competitiveness of Mercosur agri-food sectors, through comparison between agriculture in the EU and the Mercosur countries with respect to the following elements: natural endowment (land, climate, water resources), farm structures, employment, farm capital and investment, rural infrastructure, transportation and marketing systems, key characteristics of the food processing sector, production and consumption levels and trends, yields and intermediate input use, and price levels. Key commodity chains are targeted.

Description of work

• Develop methodologies (key indicators) and instruments, using an EU base-line study as the leading document for extrapolation of key indicators to be applied to the Mercosur countries (to maintain consistency of methods between country, commodity and region research). A methodology workshop with invited experts is envisioned. At this workshop, needs to be decided also, which key commodities/products, in which countries will be focussed on. While currently a first estimation on this, exists, this needs to be formally validated.
• Construction of Info Gap Matrix on selected commodity chains, and other, by Mercosur country, spearheaded by WP 2 is essential to identify (missing) data needs and identify data collection cells
• In-country data collection, processing & analysis, by the 6 country teams, whose coordinators underwent training with UFSCar in Brazil.
• Reporting. Besides on analysis, additional emphasis will be placed on the packaging and targeting of the final products and their audiences – this will be supported by the WP 8 team. It is envisioned that the results can be very greatly valorised (incl. popular publications in several languages).

Deliverables

D9 Paper on the methodology (key indicators) for comparing EU and Mercosur agricultures [8,R,PU]
D10 Info Gap Matrix completed by commodity and country [10,O,RE]
D11 Reports on the comparison EU and MercoSur agricultures [30,R,PU]

Milestones and expected results

M10 Workshop on methodology and its recommendations [6]
M11 Primary data collected in the countries [24]