MULTICRITERIA DECISION AID METHODOLOGY AS A TOOL FOR EVALUATION OF MAIZE CROPPING SYSTEMS

Abstract

Conforming to the principles of sustainable development is one of the great challenges of agricultural research when designing and adapting technologies that guarantee at the same time economic profitability to rural settlements and lower negative environmental impacts. However, for farmers, the choice of technologies is a complex decision that seeks to meet several and, many times, conflicting objectives. In order to develop viable and sustainable proposals, it is fundamental to understand the criteria that guide the farmers’ decisions to evaluate the proposed technologies. The objective of this paper is to explore the potential of Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA) in the analysis of maize-based cropping systems (dryland farming of grain maize) for family farms based on a multicriteria model developed with agrarian reform settlers of the municipal district of Unaí, state of MG, Brazil. The MCDA allowed to systematize a robust set of quantitative and qualitative criteria for the analysis of the cropping systems and showed that the farmers’ evaluation is of wider scope than that based on productivity, which is the one usually considered as the main criterion of technology evaluation.