In many low- and middle-income countries, agribusinesses are deeply engaged in providing services to small- and medium-scale farmers. Such services can include agricultural advisory services or extension. Yet this phenomenon of agribusiness-based advisory services (ABAS) has received relatively little attention in the study of and discussions on advisory services. This is a critical oversight, as agribusinesses are increasingly present as service providers, and hence shape the prevailing service landscape for smallholder farmers. This report discusses the findings of a learning trajectory. It presents evidence on the contribution of agribusinesses to the promotion of inclusive agricultural development, and on the choices they make in operating advisory services under competitive pressures. The report also highlights concrete areas where the different service delivery models by agribusinesses could be improved.

Small farmers in India are generally trapped in the vicious cycle of low productivity, high cost of credit, with no market connectivity, and as result, tend to be at the subsistence level of farming. Standalone interventions in productivity enhancement or introduction of high value crops without market linkages is detrimental as the farmer would have incurred more on the cost of cultivation with no prospect of better returns due to poor links with the market. Therefore, to increase the income of small farmers, an integrated approach of increasing productivity, together with market linking and also ensuring access to the proper inputs has to be implemented. The Syngenta Foundation India (SFI) has been following this approach since 2009; and the main reason for its success has been its focus on developing and anchoring of local rural youth as Field Extension Workers or Agri-entrepreneurs, who provide all agricultural services to small farmers.

Food production and consumption patterns have changed significantly in recent decades. Increased incomes have triggered demand for higher-value food products, while urbanization has led to the expansion of retailing. In the meantime, food supply chains have become ever more integrated and globalized. This has imposed additional constraints on the majority of small-scale and semi-subsistence farmers. The required shift from subsistence farming to more commercially-oriented farming is a slow process and often hampered by weak management and business skills, limited ability to manage risks, the quality, quantity and timing of production, poorly organized producers, lack of capital, poorly developed markets, and the high costs of intermediaries and transactions.To overcome these challenges, rural producers need support. Pluralism in extension and advisory services(EAS) can facilitate a broader range of services, and play a role in facilitating market linkages, developing the necessary skills, coaching on business and marketing, organizing producers, and brokering relations, as well as fostering agri-entrepreneurship both on-farm and along the agricultural value chain.

Agribusiness incubation plays a key role in creating and nurturing viable agricultural entrepreneurships involving diverse stakeholders. Currently, agribusiness incubation is campus bound, offering cohort-based pre-incubation and other incubation services. This strategy has an inherent limitation of leaving out grassroot incubation, something that has always been associated with agricultural value chains. With this in mind the Agri-Business Incubator of the ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (ICAR-CTCRI ABI) has developed the concept of Satellite Incubation Centres – a collaborative system for decentralising incubation services to the grassroot level.

As a result of the research fieldwork and of permanent academic reflection by the Research Group on Rural Management and Development at Colombia’s Universidad Nacional (GIGDR for its name in Spanish), the methodological approach was constructed to support the “Nuclei of Rural Entrepreneurs”, seeking to respond to the need to strengthen sustainable development processes with the communities and bearing in mind that most institutional initiatives aimed at rural development have limited resources, which are assigned for short-term projects. The GIGDR defines the Nuclei of Rural Entrepreneurs (NRE) as groups of individuals within a territory who develop innovative processes in some aspect pertinent to their context or productive problems. The research group has been involved in rural areas of Colombia, building proposals with the active participation from the NREs as an alternative model to the conventional rural associative enterprise.

While entrepreneurship has been talked about since many years, agripreneurship is something which we started discussing only recently. The characteristics of Agripreneurs have been discussed in this blog and argues the need to encourage, support and promote agripreneurship by extension and advisory service providers has been emphasized.

 Against a background of limited government resources and expertise, innovative partnerships that bring together business, government and civil society actors are increasingly being promoted as a mechanism for improving productivity and driving growth in agriculture and food sectors around the world. Commonly referred to as public–private partnerships (PPPs), these initiatives are common in sectors such as infrastructure, health and education, but their application in the agriculture sector is relatively new. Agri-PPPs are broadly promoted as having the potential to help modernize the agriculture sector and deliver multiple benefits that can contribute towards sustainable agricultural development that is inclusive of smallholder farmers. However, the motivation behind this approach and the loose manner in which the concept is defined raise many unanswered questions about the types of project that may be suitably governed by agri-PPPs.

The role of the farmer in Europe is changing, as farmers have to develop new skills to be competitive. In a word, they need to become more entrepreneurial. Many of the skills associated with running a successful business are not necessarily skills that the farmer has. The paper presents a number of models, delineating these skills and provides initial definitions of farm entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills. Suggests that farmers do not systematically access Business Advice networks and that they are less likely to access opportunities because of limited business networks and feel farming is ‘different’. Also proposes that farmers do not systematically engage in continual professional development to update their skills and competences.

UK farming is less entrepreneurial than many other industries. Yet more entrepreneurial

farms are more profitable. This is evidenced from academic research. If this is so, there is scope for the UK farming industry to learn lessons and improve its returns as a result. Farming is a commodity industry with multiple producers of homogenous goods. Buyers therefore purchase on price. In this business model, margins are inevitably tight and so volume has to be high and costs ruthlessly low. Variation in profitability is rising, policy support that has protected farmers for 50 years is declining and could be 30% less in 5 years’ time. Political change is also placing new restrictions on the industry. The challenges of commercial farming are increasing. We cannot do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Entrepreneurship in agriculture is an important issue in Europe. Policy makers, researchers, farmers’ unions and advisory services are all working on the development of entrepreneurship in agriculture. The question answered in this report is why entrepreneurship in agriculture is important and what kind of entrepreneurial skills farmers require. This report is part of the European research project ‘Developing Entrepreneurial Skills of Farmers’ (www.esofarmers.org). Research institutes from six countries are involved in this project (England/UK, Finland, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland). The report covers one phase of the project, which has the following objective: Exploration of the significance of entrepreneurship in agriculture in selected European countries.

Diversification to farm tourism is increasingly seen as a viable development strategy to promote a more diverse and sustainable rural economy and to counter declining farm incomes. However, our understanding of the dynamics of the modern farm tourism business and the entrepreneurial and competitive skills farmers require in making the transition from agriculture to a diversified - and service based - enterprise remains limited. Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the range of skills and competencies that farmers in the North West of England identify as important when adopting a diversification strategy to farm tourism. With the findings indicating that that whilst a range of managerial skills are valued by farmers, they lack many of the additional business and entrepreneurial competencies required for success. Moreover, this paper acknowledges the need to generate consensus on the requisite skill-set that farm tourism operators require, along with a need for a currently fragmented rural tourism literature to acknowledge the significance of rural entrepreneurship and the characteristics of successful farmers and farm tourism ventures. 

The main purpose of this descriptive correlative research is to consider the effects of agricultural extension system on promoting the entrepreneurial characters of farmers in rural areas. Statistical society of research was 1800 persons of Kermanshah province farmers who attended extension classes at least once. By using Cochran's formula, sample size is determined and it is concluded of 125 individuals that by stratified sampling method proportional to township size, attributed. Research instrument was questioner with cronbach alpha = 0.85 as reliability. Independent variable is "extension education" and dependent variable is “incidence of client's entrepreneurial characters “. Result of compare mean between amount of "entrepreneurial characters” of client before and after taking part in classes’ shows that there is significant difference between them.

Abstract: Agricultural Cooperatives, as member-owned and controlled agribusiness enterprises traditionally play an important role in upgrading the socio-economic status of their members and local Communities. However, in Greece, the majority of Agricultural Cooperatives face severe financial problems, which undermine their existence. In order to surpass this situation, they have sought means of enhancing their business dimension using more competitive forms of collaboration. These include alternative forms of collective entrepreneurship associated with the transformation of “Traditional Cooperatives” into “New Generation Cooperatives”, which under appropriate conditions can ensure their development and their members’ welfare. The typology developed in the present paper presents distinct patterns of collective entrepreneurship in which the traditional cooperative and the private enterprise are the extreme poles. The typology presented allows the comparison of alternative forms of collective entrepreneurship in the light of a threedimensional balance between economic development, environmental protection and social equity.

The agriculture sector around the world has experienced profound changes in recent years. The ability and propensity of farmers to engage in entrepreneurial behaviours is a key explanation of the different patterns of responses within the sector. Lack of business opportunities and insufficient income in rural areas have encouraged developing countries to consider new strategies such as creating job opportunities and enhancing rural livelihood. To meet this challenge, entrepreneurship strategy as a new paradigm has been proposed by many countries. The study aimed to explore determinants of agripreneurship in Trans Nzoia East sub County with a focus on small scale farmers. The objectives of the study were to explore the contribution of farmer training, the role of financial support, the influence of individual farmer characteristics, and the role of market access to agripreneurship among small scale farmers in Trans-Nzoia East Sub-County. The study adopted quantitative and qualitative exploratory research design. The population of this study was determined by getting a list of small scale farmers in the sub County that were registered in e-extension database at the Ministry of Agriculture County records. Simple random sampling method was used to select 65 small scale farmers which were 10% of the target population of 650 farmers in Trans Nzoia East sub-County, obtained from a sampling frame. The study used a questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. Data collected was analysed by chi square at 0.05 confidence level and spearman’s parametric correlation. Further, a computer statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used in entering and analysing the data.

In the recent decades, farmers' changing role in a free market driven economy has made them more entrepreneurial and competitive in their farming businesses. In a State like Manipur, India, Farm-Entrepreneurship is not an old chapter it is of relatively a new phenomenon. Therefore, the main aim of this research study is to penetrate wider and deeper to the opportunities and challenges of Small-Scale-Farmer Entrepreneurs and their contributions to the State economy. Also, the paper attempts to address suggestive and remedial measures and policy implications based on the research findings.

Promoting organic farming in the region and creating income generating model for young farmers of the Northeast India narrates on the journey with ups and downs till date .

The purpose of this guide is to provide a better understanding of the concept and practice of entrepreneurship. With this understanding it is hoped that extension workers will be better able to help farmers develop the skills and spirit of an entrepreneur. It is part of a series of booklets on farm business management designed to help extension workers support farmers.What is presented in this guide can be applied to people who want to start a farm business for the first time and to farmers who are already running a farm business.There are also many newcomers (young and old, male and female) entering farming who are starting with their first farming enterprise. This guide can help extension workers help all of these potential farmer-entrepreneurs.

What is it that differentiates awardee farmers from other farmers who think that farming is not remunerative enough? The differences may be due to varied knowledge levels, skills possessed and differences in certain psychological attributes. Something that creates such achiever farmers, like their demarcating characteristics, their modus-operandi, kind of strategies these achiever farmers utilize etc, are some of the intriguing aspects for researchers and policy planners. This study, therefore, has analysied the personal, socio-economic and psychological correlates of successful agripreneurship.

Agripreneurship has potential to generate growth, diversifying income, providing widespread employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in rural areas.This paper, thus, mainly focused on basic concepts of agripreneurship, entrepreneurship skills, and needs of agripreneurship development in India along with major reason for promoting agripreneurship development in country.