Sustentabilidade de sistemas de cultivo irrigados orgânico e convencional de base familiar

Abstract

Family farming has contributed to social development because through millions of small producers it has been a growing industry of entire relevance for the development of the country. Despite the high current production efficiency in agriculture it has been observed many environmental and social impacts, such as: soil erosion, contamination of surface and groundwater, loss of biodiversity, loss of traditional knowledge associated with economic dependence, reducing of job opportunities and income as well as rural exodus and social exclusion. For this reason, in the past few years it has been giving very strong focus on ecological benefits from cultivation of organic products. The general objective of this research is to comparatively analyze, based on indicators of economic, social and environmental indicators, two irrigated cultivation systems of organic and conventional production. The value of production and income of the farmer were respectively evaluated as variables associated to social and economic dimensions. The microbial activity of the soil was used as an environmental variable and the statistical analysis was performed using the program "ASSISTAT 7.5 BETA". The generation of direct jobs per area unit in the conventional tillage system corresponds to the reference values. Nevertheless, the organic system provides a generation of direct jobs that may reach three times the average capacity of employment generation per area unit of irrigated agriculture in the Brazilian semi-arid region, thus creating in a sustainable way, maintenance conditions for peasants. The organic system has a lower risk associated with the economic dimension compared to conventional tillage system. Current useful agricultural areas of the two production units allow them to remain in agricultural activity ensuring the social reproduction of farmers in a scenario with funding from the Pronaf. The results of the evaluated environmental variables demonstrate that production unit with organic farming has higher environmental sustainability, since the soil has good physical and chemical conditions that are more satisfactory to the development of microorganisms.