Resilience in fruit systems in southern Uruguay

Strategies for agroecological transition: Doctoral thesis abstract

Abstract

Fruit growing in Uruguay makes a substantial contribution to food sovereignty, employment generation and family production. Its evolution shows a significant reduction in the number of producers and the cultivated area and an increasingly greater geographic concentration of the production area. The research aimed to evaluate and analyze the resilience of fruit systems, identify territorial potential for the development of fruit growing in Uruguay and discuss agroecological transition strategies. The geographical concentration of the crop in the south of the country explains the climatic vulnerability that was manifested by the high levels of hail damage that represented losses of more than 40% of the expected harvest in 2013. Diversification at the landscape scale is considered a strategy of adaptation for fruit growing, which contributes to reducing climate vulnerability and, at the same time, strengthening family production and food sovereignty. Resilience was assessed by applying the Holistic Risk Index (IHR), which combines threat, vulnerability and response capacity. The IHR values were low and similar between producers; the threats were fundamentally climatic, vulnerability responds to economic factors and the response capacity is linked to experience, knowledge and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. To evaluate the territorial potential for geographical diversification, the availability of cold, soil suitability and distance to the main distribution market and towns with more than 5 thousand inhabitants were considered; 35.6% of the territory presents a high and very high potential for production. In the technical-productive and socio-cultural dimensions, there are favorable conditions to initiate agroecological transition processes at the farm level. It is necessary to strengthen the political dimension to consolidate property processes and advance the transition to larger scales.