Avaliação da sustentabilidade socioeconômica e ambiental em propriedades rurais de Minas Gerais pelo método ISA

Abstract

Due to the urgent need to improve the sustainability of agroecosystems, several efforts have been made to evaluate the effect of alternative strategies on the main environmental and socioeconomic variables at the agricultural, environmental and regional levels. An integrated system for the measurement of economic, social and environmental performance is presented with the objective of assisting the management of rural establishments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sustainability of rural properties in municipalities of Minas Gerais through the application of the ISA method. From a population of 39 family production units, indicators of soil and water quality were evaluated, as well as interviews to evaluate farmers' perception of soil, water, vegetation and socioeconomic aspects of agroecosystems. The information collected allowed a classification of the properties into 4 distinct groups. The mean ISA value for the properties was 0.57, below the value of 0.70 that is considered ideal, and this set is classified as in a state of development. A comparison was made between the ISA of 39 properties applied in the years 2013 and 2016, allowing to verify an improvement of sustainability conditions after the implementation of several actions identified after the first application. Thus, through the results found, it was concluded that ISA is an appropriate tool to assess the sustainability of rural properties, suggest improvements and also identify trade-offs in terms of sustainability between socioeconomic and environmental aspects, identifying improvements after 3 years of monitoring of these properties.