Sustentabilidade de produção agrícola das famílias assistidas pelo Projeto de Transposição do Rio São Francisco em São José de Piranhas - PB.

Abstract

Sustainable development challenges us to make use of development practices that ensure quality of life for current and future generations. Sustainable agriculture is that with the least environmental impact possible. To measure sustainability in agriculture, it is necessary to use indicators that enable monitoring cultivation methods to obtain information that can determine whether such methods are sustainable and identify aspects that need to be improved. The aim of the present study was to identify the agricultural production sustainability index of families assisted by the São Francisco River Transposition Project in the municipality of São José de Piranhas, Brazil. The study was conducted in rural productive communities between October 2nd, 2017 and June 30th, 2018. Data collection involved the use of a questionnaire administered in interview form. The results indicate that the farmers assisted by the project do not use sustainable farming practices. The analysis of the data revealed that family farming in the rural communities investigated has a low economic index (0.10), low agronomic technical index (0.49), low management index (0.03), low ecological index (0.06) and low institutional index (0.13).Based on the methods employed in the present study, all indicators demonstrated low sustainability, resulting in a low sustainability index.