The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the possibilities of building and assessment of scenarios of sustainability that the peasants who practice irrigated agriculture in Mexico have. In the first part, we introduce an approach to the evolution of the concept of sustainability, emphasizing on its social dimension, because we consider that it constitutes the backbone from which it will be possible to evaluate its feasibility in a more concrete way. The second part of the article presents an approach to the search of methodologies for its assessment in the study of systems which practice irrigated agriculture, in which it was a priority to consider the social perception.