CHARACTERIZATION OF PRODUCTION SYSTEMS BY AGROECOLOGICAL ZONES: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE NATIONAL CORN AND SORGHUM RESEARCH CENTER

Abstract

Agricultural analysis should consider the interaction between environmental and socioeconomic aspects. This type of approach, however, demands a great amount of human and financial resources, which have limited the geographical area of research that takes these aspects into consideration. A methodology to separate the agricultural area through natural resources and socioeconomic aspects is proposed in this study. By delimiting the geographical boundaries through agroecological criteria and not by political one, this type of procedure allows to extrapolate the results to regions with similar characteristics. This methodology provides a better balance among geographic amplitude of extrapolation, identification of important aspects to the definition of public interventions in agriculture and low cost of execution. An example of the methodology is presented, describing the use of this procedure within the maize production analysis in a Brazilian region.