Avaliação da sustentabilidade das unidades de manejo familiares que produzem coco-anão verde em monocultivo e produção consorciada no perímetro irrigado das várzeas de Sousa-PB.

Abstract

Sustainability evaluation in agriculture provides essential information on the feasibility of farming systems, contributing to the pursuit of sustainable development. This study deals with the sustainability of coconut trees cultivation in the irrigated perimeter of the Sousa floodplains, where the dwarf coconut is cultivated in monoculture and in mixed intercropping with the banana trees. The overall objective was to assess the sustainability of the family agroecosystems that produce coconut trees in those two management forms. The agroecosystems studied belong to sectors 6 and 7 of the irrigated perimeter and the field study occurred between the years 2015 and 2016. The method for conducting the research was based on the proposal MESMIS (Framework for the evaluation of natural resource management systems incorporating sustainability indicators) and addressed the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. The development of the work resulted in 6 composite sustainability indicators: water resources, soil management, soil quality, quality of life, labor activities and economic conditions. The indicators were measured through interviews, direct observation and laboratory analyses. The Overall Sustainability Index of the monoculture was 2.14 and of the mixed intercropping was 2.13, both indicating that the agroecosystems are in regular conditions of sustainability, and that there are no great differences between them. About the overall composite sustainability indicators, the worst results were related to water resources (1.99) and economic conditions (1.67), both demonstrating small contribution to the local sustainability and corroborating a verified relationship between not providing integral water demand to plants and their full productivity. The best result (2.49) was the quality of life, representing a regular condition of sustainability. For the data analyzed, there were no significant differences between monoculture and mixed intercropping, this may have been due to the strong drought that compromised the production of dwarf coconut in both types of cultivation.