Economic Dynamics as the Main Limitation for Agricultural Sustainability in a Colombian Indigenous Community

Abstract

Ancient agroecological farms, or chagras, of the Kamëntšá Biyá and Kamëntšá Inga indigenous communities in the Sibundoy Valley of Colombia offer valuable insights into the environmental challenges of intensive agriculture and promote sustainable food production. Sustainability indices have been developed to assess farm-level sustainability and enhance agroecological practices; however, data limitations hinder monitoring and correlation with external factors. This study evaluated sustainability indices in Sibundoy Valley chagras using the holistic evaluation system for farming intensification (HESOFI) interview system with 800 randomly selected chagras, assessing economic, agro-environmental, and sociopolitical–cultural dimensions. The endogenous factors considered included areas managed with diversified agricultural systems, the percentage of transformed products, inputs generated by the chagra, and products intended for sale. Exogenous factors included distance to rivers, roads, cities, and vegetation index ratio. The results showed that all chagras fell below the minimum sustainability threshold (80%), with the economic dimension scoring the lowest. Based on these findings, three strategies were proposed to improve the economic scores and overall sustainability indices of these chagras.