Profile of urban farmers of the Province of Valdivia, Region de Los Rios

Abstract

In order to characterize the profile of urban farmers, a snowball survey (Torres, 2005) and a static questionnaire were applied to the eight communities of the Province of Valdivia, Región de los Ríos. The data generated was analyzed using descriptive statistics.
The survey studied 85 urban agriculturists with an average age of 53 years; 56.5% of which were women and only 23.5% had emigrated from the countryside to the urban areas.
Many of the surveyed subjects have always been bound to urban agriculture, spending more than eight hours daily on this activity (37,6%), and 50.6% of them initiated this business by their own initiative. The most common agricultural businesses were nurseries and ornamental plants. The reasons that the studied group gave for working in urban agriculture were diverse, mainly being that they had always worked in agriculture, unemployment and family economy.