ABSTRACT
Sustainable agricultural development is difficult to implement because institutional arrangements, market forces, policies, and research efforts are biased against it. For those non-government organizations (NGOs) involved in the implementation of agroecological proposals, a major challenge is the promotion of productive alternatives that are not only ecologically sound but also economically profitable. Technologies are evaluated through very general criteria addressing environmental, economic, and social concerns, as expressed by local residents. Failure in the top-down development approaches legitimized the role of NGOs as new actors in rural development in the Third World. The agroecological approach is culturally compatible since it builds upon traditional farming knowledge, combining it with elements of modern agricultural science. In unique designs based on the chinampas and Asiatic aquaculture systems, vegetable production, animal husbandry, and fish production were integrated through the management and recycling of organic matter. Each production unit has an outermost band of vegetation consisting primarily of second growth species present naturally in the region.
