Evaluación y desarrollo de propuestas para mejorar la sostenibilidad del sistema de producción de la familia Bazzano – Gallo: Profundización del enfoque agroecológico

This work sought to systematize the productive experience of José Luis Bazzano and Brenda Gallo, and to generate proposals that contribute to improve the productive system, using the co-innovation methodology. In the first stage, a characterization and sustainability diagnosis of the current farm system was carried out, and then a farm redesign proposal was developed to overcome the limitations found during the diagnosis phase in order to contribute to the consolidation of the agroecological system. During the farm work, the MEDITAE framework (Marco de Evaluación y Diagnóstico para Impulsar Transiciones AgroEcológicas) was developed and used as a tool to support the farm co-innovation process, deepening the agroecological approach in the analysis. In this sense, the work also provides methodological elements for the study and development of agroecologically based systems. It was identified that the main problems of the farm were related to the ecological processes of carbon and nutrient cycling (loss of organic matter and soil nutrient stock), energy flow (low annual soil cover and low crop yields), and some aspects linked to the socio-economic process (fundamentally linked to family income and dependence on few and fluctuating commercial channels). The main objective of the proposal was to reduce the pressure on family labor by ordering and prioritizing activities, and to increase or in some cases maintain the total harvested volume by reducing the horticultural area. It also sought to raise awareness of some key management points that were not being fully contemplated by producers, for example, the negative balance of carbon and nutrients in the soil, which strongly questioned the sustainability of the system. At the same time, the proposal generated allows a larger area to be set aside for spontaneous and/or semi-permanent cultivated vegetation, promoting biodiversity conservation and encouraging the use of irrigation to stabilize the quality of production and ensure productive processes. In spite of some weaknesses identified in the MEDITAE framework, typical of a development process, it was understood that it provides a global vision of the systems, focusing on the understanding and analysis of the socio-ecological processes and their interactions, enriching the discussion and deepening the agroecological approach, with an enormous potential contribution as a tool for research, teaching and extension.