Strategies for developing agripreneurship among farming community in Uttar Pradesh, India

A farmer to become successful agripreneurs needs to recognize appropriate market opportunities, manage existing resources for taking risk. In general, agripreneurs should be proactive, curious, determined, persistence, visionary, hard working, honest, integrity with strong management and organizational skills. Agripreneurship is greatly influenced mainly by the economic situation, education and culture. The critical analysis of agripreneurs and traditional farmers in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh in India clearly indicates that if the right environment is created and farmers are provided with good infrastructure, technological support, and timely availability of credit it can enhance food production and ensure food security as well as increase in income of the farmers and quality of life. Contrary to common belief, caste, farm size, and age of the farmers are not necessarily major constraints for the success of agripreneurship. Even less educated small farmers of old age can also become an agripreneur provided they are clearly informed about the right type of technologies and knowledge about their use. Hence, technology dissemination system is equally important than technology generation. The farm size per se is not a major constraint. At present, information has become another crucial input like land, labour, and capital for enhancing agricultural production and if right type of information and facilities/services are provided timely certainly a few of the farmers will become agripreneurs.