SUSTAINABILITY OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE METHODOLOGIES USED FOR THEIR EVALUATION

Abstract

Background. Currently, agricultural production systems are intensives and develop in a context of climate change, soil degradation, environmental pollution, and scarce resources. Thus, it is necessary to know the level of sustainability of agroecosystems and its implications in economic, environmental and social terms. Objective. The aimed of this research was to carry out a systematic review of the methodologies used to evaluate the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agricultural production systems (SPA). Methodology. The study was carried out in accordance with the PRISMA statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyzes), a systematic literature study was carried out in the global databases ScienceDirect, JSTOR, SpringerLink, Dialnet, Google Scholar, Google Academic, using as search terms using the Boolean operator: “evaluation, methodologies, agricultural sustainability”. Zotero (www.zotero.org), a free access manager for bibliographic references, was used. In the case of Peru, the database of the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Agriculture of the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (PDAS-UNALM) was reviewed. Results. Twenty-two frameworks or methodological proposals were found. Some frameworks and methodological proposals focus on the construction of indicators of environmental and economic sustainability and to a lesser extent social ones; others in defining sustainability indices, synthesizing values of economic, environmental and social indicators in a single numerical value; and another group that develop conceptual evaluation frameworks with a hierarchical structure of the indicators, start from attributes or objectives, perform the comparison of reference and alternative production systems, and due to their flexibility, they are applicable in different SPAs. In 88% of the sustainability study cases in Peru, the methodological proposal of "Multicriteria Analysis" was used, explained by its low cost, easy definition and interpretation of indicators and adaptable to evaluate the sustainability of most SPA from Peru. Implications. The application of methodologies to evaluate the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agricultural production systems are not rigid, in some cases they can be adapted or modified according to the criteria of the researchers based on the characteristics of the agroecosystems. Conclusions. For the evaluation of the sustainability of SPAs where a large amount of information with economic, environmental and social variables is involved, there are alternatives such as frameworks or methodological proposals that can be adapted according to the objectives, spatial analysis or their multidimensional nature. In cases of SPA sustainability analysis studies in Peru carried out between 2012 and 2020, it was found that 88% used the methodological proposal of Sarandón and Flores (2009) based on the "Multicriteria Analysis" and define the levels of sustainability with indices.