Assessing the sustainability of agricultural land use through indicators

The use of indicators, in the evaluation of small agricultural systems, contribute to the standardization of criterion and variables to conjugate in order to define if a system is sustainable or not. On the other hand the use of indicators and data makes an evaluation more reliable upon guaranteeing their analysis in the time and the space. A quantitative measure of sustainability is the comparison between the current land use and its vocation for this use with the objective of determining areas of conflict. Considering the antecedents before mentioned and knowing the necessity of land use planning in the sugar cane industry, this paper has the objective of proposing indicators that allow to evaluate the sustainability of the agricultural land use in "HEctor Molina" sugar mill. The fact of selecting the existent conflicts between land use and its vocation for this use like Sustainability Indicators aims, to avoid overexploitation of this valuable resource and on another hand that sugar cane occupies the areas of high aptitude for its establishment and development, keeping in mind the social object of the sugar mill. The sustainable indicator conflicts of use allows to make valuations that bear to the generation of scenarios truly sustainable, so that the analysis of the conflicts of use could be an important tool for decision making in sugarcane agriculture.