Evaluation of the sustainability of peasant production systems of the Association of Organic Coffee Growers of Colombia - ACOC- Valle del Cauca

Abstract

Indicators establish a very useful tool to evaluate in a near way the sustainability of agriculture, from a multi­dimensional focus that integrates ecologic, economical, sociable, cultural, and political variables, interacting in a specific agro ecosystem. The study presents the results of the state and performance in the sustainability of productive systems of the Association of Organic Coffee Growers of Colombia AOCGC, by means of eleven local indicators related to the resources and operation of the system, contrasting the results of two cycles of evaluation in 2005 and 2010.

The evaluations were made in an interactive way with thirty peasant families of the AOCGC, using MESMIS methodology - Framework to Assess the Sustainability of Alternative Natural Resource Management Systems. For the statistical analysis, there was created a factorial plane with eleven active, categorical variables, one illus­trative categorical variable of four locations: Restrepo, Buga, Riofrío, village of Phoenicia, and an illustrative continuous variable to the Sustainability Indexes. The results presented cutbacks from 1.8% to 15.8% for the groups 1 and 3, accordingly; and an increase of 13.2% for the group 2. The indicators that presented the greatest variation were sustainable agro diversity, biodiversity, and alimentary self-sufficiency. In general, the changes on the indicators were not meaningful, showing that the sustainability of the productive systems of the AOCGC had a balanced behavior throughout the five years that passed among the two evaluations.