Strengthening the Citrus Value Chain through Innovative Approach

Mexico has a tremendous potential in the agricultural sector to venture into international markets for its excellent environmental conditions, in addition to a high and diverse agricultural production, especially in lemon’s production and exportation; unfortunately, despite the competitive advantages of the country, agricultural marketing has diminished by problems that have blocked the development of the lemon industry.

The research was conducted in the Valley of Apatzingan, integrated with ten municipalities that concentrate most of the lemon production of Michoacan. The object of the study were 4200 producers, 50 packers, 10 industries, 13 suppliers and 15 nurseries. This region is at the top in agricultural production in Michoacan, and the problems the lemon production has faced, despite its benefits, it hasn’t been adequately promoted in international marketing; thereby preventing further integration of innovation networks.

Based on the above, the objective of this paper, is to describe which are the variables that drive the increase in export competitiveness. Lemon-System-Product’s of Michoacan state, based on innovation networks and actors.

For the design of methodology, we propose an approach, the following hypothesis: There is a positive relationship between innovation network and the actors who compose, reflecting in the export competitiveness of Lemon-System-Product’s in Michoacan’s state.

This methodology puts in evidence twofold: the dynamics of technological innovation and analyzing innovation networks, exchanging information between both approaches to enrich the analysis.

The effects of the producer group and location on variables related with the characteristic of the producer, the productive orientation of the production unit and technology adoption indices were assessed with analysis of variance.