Distribuição das atividades econômicas e desenvolvimento regional em mesorregiões selecionadas do sul do Brasil : 1970 a 2000.

Abstract

This research objectified to identify the differentials’ determinates of socioeconomic performance of the mesorregions Noroeste Rio-Grandense, Oeste Catarinense, Sudoeste Paranaense and Oeste Paranaense in the period from 1970 to 2000, analyzing the mesorregions’s economic activities and specializations distribution. These four mesorregions are considered, by some authors, as being similar. These similarities are in the agrarian structures, in the competitive structures and in the standards of labour organization in the 1970s. But despite these similarities the Oeste Paranaense’s mesorregion and the Oeste Catarinense’s mesorregion had presented better socioeconomic performances (considered for the tax of growth of the total and sectorial PIBs and the total population) in comparison with the Noroeste Rio-Grandense and Sudoeste Paranaense’s performances, in the same period. The methodology used was based on the analytical research, basically, with secondary data from the IBGE’s Institute. The first step was to test if the mesorregions were similar in 1970. The author had verified that some particularities existed in the productive and agrarian structures of each mesorregion. In addition, the set of information presented about the year of 1970, confirmed a big differentiation in detriment of an extreme similarity between the mesorregions. The main similarities were: the distribution of the rural properties, consisted of small establishments; the form of mesorregions’s occupation; and in the farming production, the significant percentage represented by the production of the temporary farming (the soybean culture in the Noroeste Gaúcho and the corn culture in other mesorregions) and of cattle (swines’s activity). However, what explains the differentiated performance of these mesorregions were the productive options (specializations) of the period. The Noroeste Gaúcho was the only one to present inferior percentile performance in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors when compared with the performance of the South of Brazil. In contrast, the sectorial dynamics, mainly of the farming and the industrial ones, of the others three mesorregions, seemed to be characterized by the best performance. The Noroeste Rio- Grandense and Oeste Paranaense had extended significantly its specialization in the culture of the soybean, but while the Noroeste Gaúcho extended so much its farming specializations in the temporary cultures of grains, and with lesser comparative competitiveness, the Oeste Paranaense extended, together with the competitiveness of the temporary cultures, its cattle of swines and chicken, in other words, it diversified its farming. On the other hand, the agroindustrialization in the Oeste Paranaense was bigger that in the Noroeste Gaúcho one. In the Oeste Catarinense and the Sudoeste Paranaense this agroindustrialization also seems to have been the major characteristic of its dynamisms. In the sectorial behavior of these mesorregions the more important cities were the ones that already had a larger population and economic expression in the 1970s, in other words, the main cities of the mesorregions had consolidated in this period. On the other hand, the productive options of the farming sector, and the external economies induced by them, and the linkages effects of the three macrosectors had together been the main explanations of the differentiated socioeconomic performance of the analyzed mesorregions. Thus, by and large, in the period from 1970 to 2000, the Oeste Catarinense and Oeste Paranaense presented a better diversification and integration in their macro-sectors, and these characteristics had reflected better economic conditions, better life quality (IDH) and better income, in comparison with the Noroeste Rio- Grandense and Sudoeste Paranaense.