Sustainability indicators for banana crops in municipalities of Amazonas, Brazil

Abstract

This work presents a proposal for the construction of sustainability indicators to measure the effectiveness of the integration of the environments of the banana production system in the municipalities of Presidente Figueiredo and Rio Preto da Eva, Amazonas. It was built from a literature review and field research carried out in thirty rural properties that produce bananas, located in the municipality of Rio Preto da Eva and fifteen in Presidente Figueiredo. At the end of this work, the categories, elements, descriptors, and indicators were consolidated, aimed at measuring the sustainability of the banana production system in these municipalities. To assess the sustainability of crops, indicators can be measured from the environmental, economic, social, spatial/geographic, cultural, and political dimensions. In the Environmental Dimension, the indicators that can most affect the sustainability of banana production are the water supply in dry periods and the need to apply fertilizer to the soil. In the Economic Dimension, the indicators that can affect the most are the financing of production, the product's sales price, its industrialization, the purchasing market, and the flow of production. In the Social Dimension, the indicators that can most affect are health, education, and their participation in Associations/Cooperatives. In the Spatial/Geographic Dimension, the indicators that can affect the most are the lack of definitive land tenure and the availability of water resources. In the Political Dimension, there are few indicators used by these communities, keeping them in outdated stages of sustainable development and weakened by the globalization of the economy.