Sociodemographic, Cultural, Environmental and Agroecological Characterization in order to Adopt Urban Agriculture in the Municipality of Tuluá, Colombia

Abstract

Some communities have moved from the countryside to the city for different reasons, sometimes they have managed to settle in slums and some people go to agricultural production inside the city for their support, by means of a knowledge they bring from the countryside, seeking a place offering them useful resources to produce food, in this sense, urban agriculture as an alternative livelihood and occupation, has a symbolic value, since it is a survival strategy for families [3]. For this reason, this study was carried out within the macro project “Implementación del proyecto educativo comunitario salud alimentaria y productiva en el desarrollo sustentable de la invasión de la carrilera, corregimiento Campoalegre del municipio de Tuluá” (translated: “Implementation of the community educational project, food and productive health in the sustainable development of the invasion community La Carrilera, Campoalegre district of the municipality of Tuluá”), of the Health, Care and Society research groups; GIUR and Agricultural Production, which supported the characterization of the sociodemographic, cultural, environmental and agroecological components in the community of “La Carrilera” that aimed to evaluate and to identify the problems and needs of the study population, through the implementation of surveys, measurement of the biological quality of water based on the methodology used by IDEAM, Roldán and Shannon-Weaver, and the characterization of organic solid waste where the method defined by Marmolejo was implemented, resulting in the identification of the different social groups that make up the community, the occupation of women, the economic income of families, among others. In addition, the high levels of water pollution were manifested with a diversity index of 0.83, indicating the low diversity in the tributary of the community, also the BMWP index presented that the quality of the waters is critical and doubtful, and finally obtained an organic waste production of 60.1% identifying that mainly fruit and vegetable waste is produced. Subsequently, from the diagnosis obtained, some intervention strategies were determined for the conservation of the water resource and sustainable management practices for the use and transformation of organic waste in the study population, which allows adopting urban agriculture and contributing to sustainable development of the sector in the municipality of Tuluá, Valle del Cauca.