Impacto Socioeconómico del Sector Cacaotero en el Desarrollo Local del Cantón Flavio Alfaro.

Abstract

Flavio Alfaro is a purely cattle and farmer canton, which is why he has been able to give added value to the province, it is a canton that produces the largest amount of citrus and cocoa production in Manabí. The objective of the research was to evaluate the impact of the cocoa sector on the local development of the Flavio Alfaro canton. Therefore, a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach was used, a non-experimental cross-sectional design was applied, which is based on the observation of phenomena in a natural way. The study population was 23,822 inhabitants (INEC, 2010), where nearly 2,000 peasants are engaged in cocoa production, a simple random probabilistic sampling of 400 people was carried out, who were surveyed and provided someinformation. life stories. According to the results, it was obtained that 100% of those evaluated have involvement in the cocoa agricultural sector, 31.8% have been working between 6 to 15 years, 30% between 16 to 25 years, in addition, 92.3% consider that the economic sector of the canton is good, and 98% indicate that the socioeconomic development of Flavio Alfaro is also good. In his life story, José Galindo Bravo, a cacao producer for more than 30 years, pointed out "For me there is nothing better than having learned to harvest cacao, with which I have been able to lead my family to obtain important achievements." So that the investigation concludes that the factors that have become the greatest exponent for the development of the canton, is undoubtedly the cocoa production, and all the actions that are carried out in it, the raw material Theobroma cocoa from the Flavio Alfaro canton has It has been classified as the best nationally and an impressive place abroad, so its quality exceeds quality standards.