AGRICULTURA SUSTENTÁVEL: uma avaliação com indicadores

Abstract

Conventional cultivation techniques used in agriculture can have negative impacts on the environment. There is a need to develop less degrading production systems to achieve an environmental balance and improve the quality of life of the population. Sustainability advocates the rational use of natural resources, the balance with the population and the aggregate economic development, thus, producing in a sustainable way corroborates the current needs of agriculture consisting of the largest food production to meet the entire population optimizing the use of natural resources. One of the ways to assess the mode of production is to use indicators, which can reveal a reality. Therefore, the work aims to analyze environmental sustainability in agriculture using indicators. For the analysis, 10 indicators of sustainability of the environmental dimension were used in an agroecological rural property. The results showed that the rural property is moderately sustainable. The best average was obtained for the waste emission sub-index, followed using natural resources and impacts on the environment. Some indicators can be improved, such as risk of erosion, water changes, maintenance of habitats and exotic species, with the substitution of chemical inputs for organic ones, vegetation cover of the soil, production of more native species, constitution of conservation areas and legal reserve and irrigation by reuse integrated with fish farming, which may corroborate an increase in the sustainability of production.