Abstract

The Metropolitan Region of Santiago has a number of important agricultural production centers, largely in the hands of micro and small entrepreneurs who are often beneficiaries of development policies. Considering the above, the main objective of this paper is to characterize these producers. For this we surveyed a total of 78 producers spread across 6 of the southeastern districts of the Region, members of the Local Development Program (Prodesal) run by the Institute of Agricultural Development in Chile (Indap). The most prominent of the results obtained are the following: i) the percentage of women was higher than men by 23%, ii) the average age was 57 years old, iii) levels of education were more commonly elementary school (41%) and/or high school (32%), iv) in addition to fruit and vegetable gardens, the cultivation of flowers and ornamental plants were prominent among the most common items, as well as obtaining honey, v) 65.4% of the respondents used mechanized production systems, 70.5% did not process their production, the same had no record of their economic transactions, nor did 64.1% record their non-economic transactions and 87.2% did not use computerized systems. However, 69.2% stated that they evaluate and plan their activities each year, vi) 73.1% had not participated in any other public program in the four years prior, vii) the majority of respondents were not involved in technical or production groups (84.6%), nor marketing associations (89.7%). From the above findings it can be concluded that, at least in the case study, for the implementation of Prodesal it would be important to prioritize support in order to improve not only technical and production aspects but also those related to management, use of and access to ICT, information on available public benefits as well as fostering partnerships.