Abstract:
The small farmers that operate in a production unit environment are linked in some way to the
market where they place their generated products after covering their consumption, obtaining
monetary income that allows them to acquire goods and services that they do not produce in their
production unit. As this link strengthens, small producers can increase their income and therefore
have better conditions to get out of poverty and marginalization. One way to measure this link is
through the competitiveness index called Private Cost Ratio (CPR). The objective of this work
was to use this indicator as a measure of the competitiveness of marginalized production units, in
order to identify their positioning on the competitiveness scale and explain the reasons for such
situation. Information was collected from 60 rural production units of the municipality of San
Jacinto Tlacotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico through a questionnaire designed exprofeso and the
procedure called income analysis was applied to obtain intermediate indicators such as Net
Value Added and Cost of Internal Factors, with both Indicators CPR was obtained for each
production unit. The results indicated that it is feasible to use CPR as a measure of
competitiveness in rural production units and its greatest utility is that it allowed them to be
classified into three categories: non-competitive, competitive and competitive. The main
challenge in terms of policy towards this sector is to help UPRs in the process of competitiveness
that meant 82% of the production units studied, to climb to the category of competitiveness that
meant only 6%, which means that Achieve a positive Net Added Value higher than the Cost of
the Internal Factors and this is only achieved by strengthening the market link, in parallel the
inverse relationship between the sales and competitiveness variables was confirmed, so it was
confirmed that the market is the only way to achieve increased competitiveness |
