Chronological variation of sustainability in lemon fresh fruit packing houses, Tucumán, Argentina

Abstract

Social, environmental, economic and institutional equity is the support that should be guiding and structuring sustainable human growth. To assess sustainability is a challenge that is made with different methodologies, in a comparative way by means of indicators. Within the agro alimentary activities in the province of Tucuman, citriculture is one of the most important ones, and so for over ten years sustainable assessment has been done in different aspects of the sector. The objective of this work was to make a comparative analysis of sustainability in fresh fruit packing houses of lemon over time. We worked with a minimum set of 12 indicators that comprises the 4 pillars of sustainability. Surveys done in the years 2009 and 2016 at three different lemon packing houses, selected by the volume of fruit processed, were applied. In the social area, the three packing showed a slight increase of sustainability as regards the situation of 2009, where it showed medium values. In the environmental sector, in 2009 low and medium production agribusiness showed unsustainability and the trend continued to the present. Economic-institutional indicators showed a decrease in the packing house with high production volume while the others packing houses had a slight increase. It is concluded that there was not a clearly positive increase in the values of indicators over time, and it is necessary to intensify the activities aimed to improve the sustainability in this agribusiness.