Evaluation of the Sustainability of Lemon Producing Farms in Portoviejo, Ecuador

Beltrón C.O.V.; Julca-Otiniano A.; Berrío A.R. · Revista Iberoamericana de Viticultura Agroindustria y Ruralidad (2020) · DOI: 10.35588/rivar.v7i20.4485

Resumen

Sustainability is the ability to achieve stable economic prosperity by protecting natural systems, demonstrating a high quality of life for people. With this consideration, the investigation was carried out in Portoviejo, Ecuador. Lemon is a very important crop for the area because it exists in a large area (4.300 hectares). A lot this fruit in Ecuador is produced in that jurisdiction that has little updated information on the sustainability about this crop. The aim was to determine the sustainability of the lemon farms; the Sarandón methodology was applied, which consists of defining indicators and subindicators with sociocultural, economic and environmental variables that were applied to 102 farms and then processed according to the environmental, economic, sociocultural and general sustainability formulas. The Sarandón methodology established that only 12% of the lemon farms were sustainable due to most of the farms showed weaknesses in environmental aspects, a weight of this finding, the social and economic aspects and the strengths in its subindicators. These facts are useful to guide community research and development guidelines focused on implementing environmental certifications.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina