S. Boza and R. Jara-Rojas. 2018. Peri-urban family farming and agricultural earnings:
The effect of long-term participation in an extension program in a metropolitan area.
Cien. Inv. Agr. 45(3): 200-209. The objective of this paper is to assess the effect of long-term
participation in an extension program on peri-urban family farming earnings. For this purpose,
a survey of a sample of 156 participants in the Local Development Program (PRODESAL) of
the Chilean National Institute for Agricultural Development (INDAP) was conducted in the
Metropolitan Region of Santiago. Half of the respondents were long-term participants with at
least four yrs in the program, and the rest of the farmers were one-yr beneficiaries. A treatment
regression model (TRM) with a binary endogenous variable was used to identify differences
among long- and short-term farmer participation in PRODESAL. The first stage of the model is a
probit regression that identifies factors influencing long-term participation in PRODESAL. The
second stage has the total value of production (TVP) as a dependent variable, which captures
agricultural earnings, and one of the explanatory variables is the binary endogenous regressor
of the first stage of the model. The results show a positive impact of long-term participation
in PRODESAL on TVP. Other variables, such as farm size, fertilization and access to credit,
were significant and positively related to TVP as well. Education and social capital are shown
to be variables that increase the probability of long-term participation of family farmers in the
program.