Cartografia agroecológica: concepção teórico-metodológica e a experiência aplicada na Costa do Descobrimento, Bahia, Brasil

Abstract

In the Discovery Coast region there are experiences in organic and agroecological agriculture, however, there is still little data on environmental, social and economic aspects about them. This work developed a theoretical-methodological proposal of Agroecological Cartography, aiming to characterize and spatialize the agroecological productive units certified by a participative process, on the Discovery Coast. In the first article, an analysis was made on organic production in the State of Bahia, by Identity Territories, based on data from the National Register of Organic Producers, observing the spatio-temporal series from 2014 to 2020 and the types of entities acting certifiers. It was found that organic production in Bahia grew a lot, having had strong adherence to the Social Control Mechanisms from 2015 and to the Participatory Guarantee Systems, from 2017. On the Discovery Coast, only three municipalities have certified organic producers: Belmonte, with two records associated with organic certification by business audit; and Porto Seguro and Santa Cruz Cabrália, which concentrate agroecological production. The second article consisted of an integrative literature review on the term “Agroecological Cartography”, and a theoretical-methodological proposal for it, based on the literature on environmental planning. The integrative review indicated that there was still no theoretical-methodological proposition on terminology. The proposal interprets agroecological cartography as an instrument or tool for environmental planning, following methodological precepts associated with this process. Considering this, in the third article, the application of the theoretical-methodological proposal for the development of agroecological cartography on the Discovery Coast was carried out, following the steps: social articulation, definition of resources, delimitation of the unit of analysis, delimitation of the area of influence, data collection, preparation of maps and publication of maps. The results show that the areas visited in the period in which the research was developed, totaled 21 hectares of certified agro-ecological area and that the properties analyzed are very close to important forest fragments of the Atlantic Forest, with numerous springs and water bodies in their surroundings. ; through the survey of social, ecological and economic indicators, several ecosystem services favored by agroecological production were verified, with an average sustainability index of 2.37 on a scale of 1 to 3. Cartographic production favored a better understanding of the relationships analysis units with conservation units, springs, water bodies, indigenous lands, rural settlements and other elements of the territory, which should collaborate with regional environmental planning decisions. It was concluded that despite the considerable growth of new organic producers in Bahia, mainly with the role of CSOs and OPACs, there is an absence of systematized data on the scope of productive areas, which leaves a gap in the dynamics of land use and occupation. This requires coordinated actions between institutions of different natures. The theoretical-methodological proposition of agroecological cartography should favor the development of projects, contributing to the construction of agroecological knowledge and, its application in the Discovery Coast, proved to be an efficient tool, responding to the research problem on the scarcity of data and collaborating with the systematization of data on agroecology in the study region