SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATION OF FAMILY FARMING PRODUCTION SYSTEMS, CANTON PENIPE, ECUADOR 2021

Background: the agricultural production system, its operation, monitoring and execution, requires formulating new evaluation schemes. Integrating the vast majority of social, cultural, ecological, economic, geopolitical characteristics and factors related to the technology applied in production systems. Through the use of associated indicators in each of its dimensions and attributes, to analyze its sustainability. The objective: This research is the evaluation of the sustainability of the production systems of family farming in the Penipe canton. That demands the selection, transformation and aggregation of economic, environmental, geopolitical, cultural and social indicators, which allow determining trends of the system, using a systemic, participatory, interdisciplinary and flexible approach called the MESMIS framework. Methodology: MESMIS was applied to nine representative farms of diversified, specialized and subsistence family farming production system. By determining the critical points, the indicators were applied once standardized and weighted. Results: Specialized family farming production system is sustainable with a score of (1.56), diversified family farming is moderately sustainable with a score of (1.32) and subsistence family farming, with a value of (0.77) is considered an unsustainable system within the locality. Implications: It was found that there are some aspects that limit the farms to be considered as sustainable systems, identifying the attributes to improve. In order to improve subsistence family farming, it is necessary to work on the following parameters: productivity, stability, resilience, reliability, adaptability, equity and self-management; diversified family farming expresses the following attributes to improve: productivity, stability, resilience, reliability, equity and self-management and specialized family farming has to improve in: Productivity, resilience, stability, equity. Conclusions: This evaluation responds to a cyclical process that, by effectively integrating the evaluation in the decision-making process, improves the probability of success in the design of alternatives to improve the productive systems in the Penipe canton.