Indicadores de sustentabilidade de fácil e rápida determinação em dois agroecossistemas na comunidade de São Domingos - CE

Abstract

Sustainable agriculture involves the efficient management of available resources to guarantee the growing needs for population growth, maintaining or improving the quality of the environment and conserving natural resources. Regarding the sustainability of an agroecosystem, five indispensable indicators that need historical series of productivity to be useful. When historical series are not available, it is possible to analyze the social sustainability of agroecosystems through qualitative analyzes. The indicators evaluated are productivity, stability, environmental sustainability, equity and autonomy. The objective of applying the method in agroecosystems is to measure their degree of sustainability. The method included the participation of farmers to assess sustainability in an empirical way, evaluating plots or agroecosystems through the analysis of descriptors that gathered various indicators of soil quality and crop health. The methodology employed considers singular strategies in the socioecological dynamics of management in family farming that are invisible in the current models of agriculture. With averages ranging from 0 to 10 for each indicator, with 7 being the reference value, the agroecosystem represented by area 1 has an average of 9.1, area 2 has an average of 8.25 for cultivation health. For soil quality, area 1 has an average of 7.3, while area 2 has an average of 5.5. Such averages indicate the level of sustainability of the management employed in each evaluated area. Given the practices employed Area 1 had a higher sustainability index than Area 2.