Evaluación Ex-Ante del impacto socio-económico y ambiental de las prácticas de agricultura de conservación en los Sistemas de Producción de la Microcuenca del rio Alumbre, Subcuenca del Río Chimbo, Ecuador

Abstract

The decrease on the production and the low soil fertility when cultivating hard corn-bush beans in the Andean higland has forced farmers to seek more fertile land in the even higher places. The Instituto Nacional Autónomo de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (The Autonomous National Institute for Farming research- acronym in Spanish: INIAP) has invested during 10 years on the research and spread of alternatives for practicing Conservation Farming in the watershed of the Alumbre river. It is important to assess the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the investments done during the research and technology transfer phases on what has to do with conservation farming practices. For the economic evaluation the method called Economic Surplus was used and for the environmental evaluation the Nitrogen Index was utilized. The results show 32 % of Internal Rate of Return and a Net Present Value of USD 3,469,547.00. 312 and 291 Kg/Ha of residual nitrate have been generated from beans and hard corn respectively. The benefits for the producers when substituting technologies are USD 571.59 and 601 dollars per hectare for hard corn and beans respectively. Since the result obtained are profitable and environment friendly, it is recommended to deepen the social analysis for other specific studies in different production systems.