Home Garden Production and Energetic Sustainability in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

Abstract

Energy flows were studied for the [2002][2003] agricultural cycle in four households for which agriculture is part of a diversified survival strategy and four that practice agriculture as a business. Home garden inputs and outputs were measured monthly. Quantified inputs were: household labour, household agro-system production, and purchased external renewable and non-renewable energy. Outputs measured were: sales, family and animal foods. While both strategies had similar indicators in biomass and energy production, vegetable richness, and soil quality, household garden function and sustainability differed between subsistence and commercial householders. Subsistence gardens complemented family diet and contributed to household system resiliency. They relied heavily on renewable energy sources from within their agro-system. Gardens in commercial households reduced fruit tree area and increased animal husbandry for the market. They depended more on purchased nonrenewable energy sources and were less sustainable and much less energy efficient than traditional gardens.

Mapping adaptive capacity and smallholder agriculture: applying expert knowledge at the landscape scale

“…Across the three countries, our experts strongly associated higher adaptive capacity with increased access to markets, credit, on-farm labor, investments in soil conservation, secure land tenure, and less dynamic migration. Overall, these characteristics align closely with what we understand from the literature on assets, adaptation, and coping strategies for smallholder coffee and subsistence farmers in this region (Campos et al 2014;Alayon-Gamboa and Ku-Vera 2011;Altieri and Koohafkan 2009;Eakin et al 2006).…”

“…Primary data are used to define adaptive capacity within a specific context at the household-or community-scale. Secondary data, which are often government-generated, are used to estimate adaptive capacity locally or at broader scales (from sub-national to regional) (Holt-Gimenez 2002; Eakin et al 2006;Alayon-Gamboa and Ku-Vera 2011;PNUD 2013;Baca et al 2014). These approaches are often limited by data availability, quality, consistency, and reliability.…”

Importancia económica y social de la agrobiodiversidad del traspatio en una comunidad rural de Yucatán, México.

“…The importance of the backyard is also evidenced because it offers members of the family opportunities for self-employment, measuring this not as a formal job but rather as performing activities that the phenological development of the plant species or the needs of the animals require; that is, the activities performed in the backyard are related primarily to production (Alayón Gamboa and Gurri, 2008). The various activities in the backyard demanded in average a total of 38.4 days of labor per year, with the participation of the father standing out in these (Table 2).…”

Responding to disturbances: lessons from a Mayan socio-ecological system

“…Also, it has been shown that diversification of productive activities might contribute to food security , as well as to the maintenance of stable populations of flora and fauna within the Yucatán Peninsula (Escamilla et al 2000). Also, diversified landscape units created by this strategy could function as reservoirs of germplasm to fulfill critical ecosystem functions (Alayón-Gamboa and Gurri-García 2008).…”