Paradigmas en la investigación de cafetales marginales en Veracruz, México

Abstract

Abstract. The global coffee crisis has its origin in the imbalance between supply and demand; the result is the major glut of the market in recent history (Bartra, 2003). The effect in Mexican coffee plantations has been that peasants have now lower incomes; they are abandoning coffee agroecosystems, migrating and adopting proscribed crops. The study and preservation of traditional coffee plantations is important because they are located in peasant indigenous areas with high biodiversity, however, they are still out of the progress. Green Revolution is the paradigm that has lead agricultural and forestry production in Mexico until now. In this essay we discussed the use of the Systems Theory, Sustainability, Agroecology and Participatory Research as paradigms for the study of marginal coffee agroecosystems, that is to say, those that are cultivated between 300 to 800 metres above sea level. This discussion is urgent because of the growing of poverty and margination of coffee indigenous groups and the discoveries that show the high levels of contamination due to the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, the depletion of water table because of its extraction to irrigate fi elds and the lost of extensive tropical rain forest areas (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005a).