Strengthening Agricultural Sustainability for Indigenous Communities Through Self-Managed Social Enterprises Arising from Their Needs

Edith García, Yaxk’in Coronado, Guadalupe Carmona-Arroyo and Mayra de la Torre ()
Additional contact information
Edith García: CONAHCYT, Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo A.C., Subsede Hidalgo, San Agustín Tlaxiaca CP 42163, Hidalgo, Mexico
Yaxk’in Coronado: Faculty of Engineering, Campus Mexico City, Universidad La Salle, Mexico City CP 06140, Mexico
Guadalupe Carmona-Arroyo: Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo A.C., Subsede Hidalgo, San Agustín Tlaxiaca CP 42163, Hidalgo, Mexico
Mayra de la Torre: Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo A.C., Subsede Hidalgo, San Agustín Tlaxiaca CP 42163, Hidalgo, Mexico

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 13, 1-16

Abstract: Sustainable rural development seeks to balance social, economic, and environmental needs in rural areas, improving the quality of life of communities and the long-term protection of natural resources. Indigenous local solutions give place to grassroots entrepreneurial initiatives, which together with associative and economic integration are key factors for agricultural production, transformation of products, self-consumption, and commercialization. This study was done in Hñähñu communities with the aim to test if participative workshops based on detonating questions are an effective approach for developing entrepreneurship agriculture initiatives of self-managed social enterprises. The initiatives were proposed by the communities to solve local problems. Three initiatives arose: (1) a community seed bank of local species associated with the Milpa including agave; (2) reforestation with agave to produce agave shoots, leaves, and sap; and (3) a company to produce agave-sap syrup. The participants, based on their traditional knowledge, developed the projects, including economic evaluation, risk analysis, and environmental aspects. Some impacts are the conservation of soil and endangered landraces, accessibility to quality seeds not commercially available, building of local organizational and entrepreneurial capacities, strengthening the community, improving the family’s income, recovery of traditional agroecological techniques, and conservation of agrobiodiversity. In conclusion, the methodology is effective for the Indigenous communities to develop initiatives for sustainable self-managed social enterprises.

Keywords: grassroots initiatives; participative workshops; rural social enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/13/5833/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/13/5833/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:13:p:5833-:d:1686766

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().