The production of potatoes in the municipality of São Lourenço do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, occurs since the arrival of the first German and Pomeranian immigrants for over 150 years. This crop has always had significant socioeconomic importance, for its tradition, habit and culture brought by the colonizers, not only promoting the development of this municipality, but also the entire southern RS. However, from the 1990s on, the potato crop of this region faced several technological and structural problems, losing ground to other crops. An alternative found by a group of farmers is the organic production system. In this sense, the objective of this work was to evaluate the potato organic systems in order to identify criteria that the farmers consider important in this production system. Two groups of farmers that grow potatoes in the organic system were selected. A group of farmers of the Reference Network of Embrapa Clima Temperado research project, and another group formed by farmers outside the Reference Network. The multicriteria decision support methodology (MCDA) was used to create participatory and interactive models. In general, the models constructed did not differ much in relation to the production practices adopted by each group of farmers. However, differences were observed in the levels of impact of actions and in the establishment of different weights between models, so the end result in order of preference of the evaluation criteria was different. For the group belonging to the reference network, potato size was the most important criterion, while for the group outside the network was the criterion risk of production.
Solanum tuberosum; family farm; ecological production; multicriteria methodology
