Rural agroecosystems under the sustainability aspect: an analysis in the southern Amazonas state

Sustainable development seeks to improve people’s lives and associates economic development and environmental preservation with proper management of natural resources. The objective of this study was to evaluate the sustainability of agroecosystems, based on some sustainability indicators, covering the economic, social and environmental dimensions of rural and rural riverside properties in the southern Amazon region, a predominantly family farming region. The research was based on the SIA - Sustainability Indicators in Agroecosystems, carried out in an interdisciplinary and participative way, and for this purpose, it was necessary to contextualize the bases of the theoretical currents of sustainable development, establishing the historical and current insertion of family agriculture, addressing the attributes of sustainability in the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions. The methodological proposal applied was multivariate statistical analysis, Principal Component Analysis, from the three production systems, in order to identify the similarities underlying all the multiple relationships existing between the indicators, for the construction of the Sustainability Index (SI). Through the use of graphs and tables it was possible to evaluate the production systems in an integrated way and it was verified that the systems are different even though they are inserted in the same region and present a regular sustainability index.