Sustainability evaluation of organic coffee production system in the Brazilian Cerrado region

This study aimed to evaluate the management of organic coffee production units in the Federal District (DF) and RIDE (Integrated Development Region of the Federal District and Surroundings), from a perspective of sustainability. The study used, as methodological support, the APOIA-NovoRural System, which is composed by 62 integrated indicators on five dimensions: (a) landscape ecology, (b) quality of the environmental compartments (atmosphere, water, and soil), (c) sociocultural values, (d) economic values, and (e) management and administration. Six potentially commercial properties were evaluated from a universe of 30 properties. The indicators revealed a General Average Environmental Performance Index of 0.75, higher than the base reference of 0.70, established by APOIA-NovoRural. The average index for the set of activities was 0.84. The atmosphere quality dimension obtained the best index (0.95), while soil quality obtained the lowest mean index (0.45) in all units. The highest overall sustainability index was 0.77 observed in one of the properties. The APOIA-NovoRural System proved to be adequate for the estimates of activities’ environmental and socioeconomic performance within rural establishments in the region studied, allowing the identification of deficiencies that may be handled by the farmers.