Sustainability evaluation of producing soybean municipalities in the state of Mato Grosso

Abstract

The objective of this contribution is to evaluate the level of sustainability of the soybean municipalities in Mato Grosso. Thus, the methodological procedure was based on the proposal of the Sustainability Indicator for Soybean Producing Municipalities (ISMS). The ISMS is composed of forty-two indicators distributed in the social, demographic, economic, political-institutional, environmental and cultural dimensions, classified into critical, alert, acceptable and very good levels of sustainability. In the final evidence about the ISMS, all municipalities of the sample presented a sustainability index at alert level. The municipalities were grouped into three clusters, in terms of the ISMS result. It is concluded that the expansion of soybeans in Mato Grosso territory is distributed in places of potential pressure on ecosystems and biophysical compartments, without the counterpart of elevation of the level of local development. This result signals the priority of reassessing the productive structure in Mato Grosso municipalities, and the reversal of public policies that prioritize the process of agricultural expansion in the regions of Amazonian ecosystems and the preservation of the Cerrado bioma.