Biocultural and socioeconomic dimensions of sustainability in agroforestry systems diversified with cacao and vanilla

Authors

  • Esteban Romero-Hernández Centro de Eco-Alfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes-Universidad Veracruzana. Priv. Guillermo Prieto núm. 2, Col. Centro, Coatepec, Veracruz. CP. 91500. Tel. 228 4116246
  • José M. Ramos-Prado Centro de Eco-Alfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes-Universidad Veracruzana. Priv. Guillermo Prieto núm. 2, Col. Centro, Coatepec, Veracruz. CP. 91500. Tel. 228 4116246.
  • Primo Sánchez-Morales Centro de Agroecología-Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Calle José de Hernández #15 A, Col. Obrero Campesina, Xalapa, Veracruz. CP. 91020. Tel. 228 1710899
  • Enrique HIpólito Romero Centro de Ecoalfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes, Universidad Veracruzana.
  • Enrique Hipólito-Romero Centro de Eco-Alfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes-Universidad Veracruzana. Priv. Guillermo Prieto núm. 2, Col. Centro, Coatepec, Veracruz. CP. 91500. Tel. 228 4116246

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v14i3.3093

Keywords:

Theobroma cacao L., Vanilla planifolia A., Agroecological management, Enterprise development, MESMIS

Abstract

Agroforestry systems and productive diversification are sustainable alternatives that reverse the damages and risks of conventional agriculture. There are few sustainability studies that allow them to be incorporated into projects aimed at increasing profitability and improving the welfare of producers, restoring ecosystem services. The objective was to assess the sustainability of two traditional agroforestry systems, diversified with cacao and vanilla, in the states of Veracruz and Oaxaca. Agroecological techniques and business development strategies were promoted with the families of both producers. The research was carried out during the period: February 2012 to July 2020, the plots are located in the municipalities of San Pedro Ixcatlán, Oaxaca and Papantla, Veracruz. The methodology of the framework of assessment of natural resource management systems was used. The results showed that the initial states had a low intensive management, low use of inputs, high diversification and oriented to subsistence agriculture. After diversification, agroecological management and business development, transition states have improved in most sustainability indicators. In particular, profitability (benefit-cost index), which reached 1.2 for San Pedro and 2.6 for Papantla when added value is given to vanilla and cacao. The participation of women in emerging activities derived from diversification and the interest of young people to continue with activities of transformation of raw materials and the commercialization of value-added products are relevant.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Enrique HIpólito Romero, Centro de Ecoalfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes, Universidad Veracruzana.

He completed undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Biology-Xalapa of the Universidad Veracruzana, as part of the 1998-2002 generation; later he entered the Postgraduate in Environmental Sciences, belonging to the Institute of Sciences of the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, during the 2003-2005 generation. He completed doctoral studies in the Postgraduate Course in Tropical Ecology of the Tropical Research Center of the Veracruzana University, as a member of the first generation 2007-2010, where he had the opportunity to spend six months in Costa Rica, at the Tropical Agricultural Center Research and Teaching (CATIE), actively participating in various activities of the Center for the Competitiveness of Eco-enterprises (CeCoEco) and the Central American Cocoa Project (PCC). Since his master's studies he has been a fellow of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). He has worked in private sector companies, financial advisory firms, environmental consultants, as well as in the Secretary of Agricultural, Rural, Forestry and Fisheries Development (SEDARPA) of the state government; from 2010 to 2011 he worked as a professor for hours at the Faculty of Biology-Xalapa. He has been an advisor to different groups of agricultural producers in the state of Veracruz, in matters of environmental management and rural business development.

References

Adger, W. N. 2000. Social and ecological resilience: are they related? prog. Hum. Geogr. 24(3):347-364. https://doi.org/10.1191/0309132007015404. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1191/030913200701540465

Alcazar, P.; Espejel, I.; Reyes, O. M. and Arredond, G. M. C. 2019. Retrospective assessment as a tool for the management of sustainability in diversified farms. Agroecol. Sustain. Food Syst. 44:30-53. Doi: 10.1080/21683565.2019.1578722.

Altieri, M. A. y Nicholls, C. I. 2002. Un método agroecológico rápido para la evaluación de la sostenibilidad de cafetales. Manejo integrado de plagas y agroecología. 64:17-24.

Altieri, M. A. y Nicholls, C. I. 2012. Agroecología: única esperanza para la soberanía alimentaria y la resiliencia socioecológica. Agroecología, 7(2): 65-83. https://doi.org/10.6018/ agroecología.

Armengot, L.; Barbieri, P.; Andres, C.; Milz, J. and Schneider, M. 2016. Cacao agroforestry systems have higher return on labor compared to full-sun monocultures. Agron. Sustain Dev. 36(70):1-10. Doi: http://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-016-0406-6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-016-0406-6

Astier, M.; Masera, O. R. y Galvan, M. Y. 2008. Evaluación de sustentabilidad. Un enfoque dinámico y multidimensional. Valencia, Immag Impressions, SL. España. 201 p.

Caso, B. L.; Barrera, L. C. and Aliphat, M. M. 2006. Cacao, vanilla and annatto: three production and exchange systems in the southern maya lowlands, centuries. J. Latin American Geogr. 5(2):29-52. https://doi.org/10.1353/LAG.2006.0015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lag.2006.0015

Cerda, B. R.; Orozco, A. L.; Carreño, R. G.; Ordóñez, J. C.; Amores, C. F. M.; Caicedo, A. W. J.; Oblitas, G. P. S. and Somarriba, C. E. 2019. Tropical agroforestry and ecosystem services: tradeoff analysis for better design strategies. In: Mosquera, L. M. R. and Prabhu, R. Ed. Agroforestry for sustainable agriculture. Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing, Cambridge, UK. ISBN: 9781786762207. 218-262 pp.

Climate-data.org. 2018. Public database. Mexico climate: average temperature in Mexico, weather & Mexico weather by month climate data.org. https://en.climate-data.org/north-america/mexico-179/.

Cuevas, C. A.; Vera, C. Y. B. and Cuevas, S. J. A. 2019. Resilience and sustainability of traditional agroecosystems of Mexico: Totonacapan. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc. 10(1):165-175. https://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/remexca/v10n1/2007-0934-remexca-10-01-165-en.pdf.

Del Amo, R. S.; Ramos, P. J. M. and Vergara, T. M. C. 2010. Ethnoecological restoration of deforested and agrocultural tropical lands for Mesoamerica. Ed. environmental and human health: risk management in development countries. Conservation of land, air, water and cultural assets. 141-156. pp.

Gómez-Pompa, A.; Flores, J. S. and Fernández, M. A. 1990. The sacred cacao groves of the Maya. Latin American antiquity. 1(3):247-257. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/972163. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/972163

González-Jácome, A. 2019. Los vaivenes históricos de dos recursos bioculturales: el cacao y la vainilla. Ed. La restauración ecológica productiva: el camino para recuperar el patrimonio biocultural de los pueblos mesoamericanos. Universidad Veracruzana. Veracruz, México. ISBN: 978-607-502-761-6. 125-151 pp.

Hipólito, R. E. and Ramos, P. J. M. 2020. Bioculturality and transdisciplinarity: two paths for reaching Sustainability through community capacity building: chapter 4. Ed. Community capacity and resilience in Latin America. Routledge, New York. 52-73 pp.

Hipólito, R. E.; Amo, S. R. y Ramos-Prado, J. M. 2010. Los procesos ecológicos del trópico como modelo para el desarrollo empresarial rural. Aleph Zero. 55(1):1-9.

Hipólito, R. E.; Carcaño, M. M. G.; Ramos, P. J. M.; Vázquez, C. E. A.; López, R. L. y Ricaño, R. J. 2017. Rev. Argent. Microbiol. 49(4): 356-365. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ram.2017.04.003

IPES/FAO. 2010. Biopreparados para el manejo sostenible de plagas y enfermedades en la agricultura urbana y periurbana. Santiago de Chile, Chile. 96 p.

López, A. P. 2014. Paquete tecnológico cacao (Theobroma cacao L.). Producción de planta. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP). México. 10 p.

Priego, G. A.; Galmiche, A. T.; Castelán, M. E.; Ruiz, O. R. y Ortiz, A. C. 2009. Evaluación de la sustentabilidad de dos sistemas de producción de cacao: estudios de caso en unidades de producción rural en Comalcalco, Tabasco. Universidad y Ciencia. 25(1):39-57. http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=15416335003.

Resilience, A.. 2007. Assessing and managing resilience in social-ecological systems: Workbook for practitioners. Resilience Alliance. USA. 54 p.

Rojas, F. J. y Rodríguez, M. F. D. 2019. Experiencias del plan cacao Nestlé, en México. Creación de valor compartido en sistemas agroforestales de cacao, café y vainilla. Una propuesta empresarial. La restauración ecológica productiva: el camino para recuperar el patrimonio biocultural de los pueblos mesoamericanos. Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, México. 357-370 pp.

Somarriba, E. J.; Orozco, A. L.; Cerda, B. R.; López, S. A. and Cook, J. 2018. Analysis and design of the shade canopy of cocoa-based agroforestry systems. In: Umaharan, P. Ed. Achieving sustainable cultivation of cocoa. Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing, Cambridge, UK. 1-31 pp.

Speelman, E. N.; López, R. S.; Colomer, N. A.; Astier, M. and Masera, O. R. 2007. Ten years of sustainability evaluation using the MESMIS framework: lessons learned from its application in 28 latin american case studies. Inter. J. Sustain. Dev. World Ecol. 14(4):345-361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504500709469735

Downloads

Published

2023-05-04

How to Cite

Romero-Hernández, Esteban, José M. Ramos-Prado, Primo Sánchez-Morales, Enrique HIpólito Romero, and Enrique Hipólito-Romero Hipólito-Romero. 2023. “Biocultural and Socioeconomic Dimensions of Sustainability in Agroforestry Systems Diversified With Cacao and Vanilla”. Revista Mexicana De Ciencias Agrícolas 14 (3). México, ME:401-12. https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v14i3.3093.

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 3 (2023)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The authors who publish in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas accept the following conditions:

In accordance with copyright laws, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas recognizes and respects the authors’ moral right and ownership of property rights which will be transferred to the journal for dissemination in open access. Invariably, all the authors have to sign a letter of transfer of property rights and of originality of the article to Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP) [National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research]. The author(s) must pay a fee for the reception of articles before proceeding to editorial review.      

All the texts published by Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas —with no exception— are distributed under a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), which allows third parties to use the publication as long as the work’s authorship and its first publication in this journal are mentioned.

The author(s) can enter into independent and additional contractual agreements for the nonexclusive distribution of the version of the article published in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas (for example include it into an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as it is clearly and explicitly indicated that the work was published for the first time in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas.

For all the above, the authors shall send the Letter-transfer of Property Rights for the first publication duly filled in and signed by the author(s). This form must be sent as a PDF file to: revista_atm@yahoo.com.mx; cienciasagricola@inifap.gob.mx; remexca2017@gmail.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license.

Most read articles by the same author(s)