Scientific validation of empirical indicators of environmental services.
Abstract
After decades of economic success, Brazilian agriculture has social and environmental consequences that must be assumed as opportunities to start processes of productive transition with the capacity to generate income and provide environmental services in the rural landscape. In this sense, family farming strengthens its strategic role, since it tends to allocate its scarce resources, labor and capital, to better take advantages of the environmental conditions arising from land and natural resources, just as the Organic Agriculture Law (2003) represents one of the most relevant measures to encourage the productive transition. In this way, the present study rescues the methodological construction process and demonstrates that the application of the methodology of scientific validation of empirical indicators of environmental services can contribute to the qualification of the official certification of organic agriculture and other public policies directed to the Brazilian family farming, as well as to use the knowledge empirical of family farming itself as a means to assist in monitoring the environmental quality of its production systems and in the environmental management of its production units.