1Professor Horticulture and Agribusiness Management, Jaipur (Raj), India
2Entrepreunership Master Graduate, Faculty of Business, Uppsala University, Sweden
Online published on 15 November, 2018.
The perceived inability of Indian agriculture to meet growing food needs of such huge population has been a major cause of policy concern over the last decades. Much of the analysis has tended to treat farmers as recipients of new technologies and passive actors in macroeconomic settings. The dominant role of agriculture in India requires that farmers should be recognized as main players in agricultural transformation. Contrary to popular perceptions, and talks that farmers are not users of technologies developed elsewhere but they perform entrepreneurial functions that involve the transformation of knowledge into goods and services. Therefore the critical areas that require deliberate policy support to enable farmers to fully realize their potential as entrepreneurs are to be identified and give emphasis. These areas are infrastructure, technical training, Capacity building and business development. There by we must conclude that by making a case for improved support systems, incentives, and the overall policy environment needed to help upgrade the entrepreneurial capabilities of farmers we will be able to achieve the target of agricultural entrepreneurship in India. As an entrepreneur, Farmers have selected a profession that is essential and fundamental to society. As the population grows, being productive on every acre of land becomes even more important.
Being an entrepreneur, especially a farmer, means you must have the inherent trait of being small You have to put in the proper amount of time planning, but you must also equip yourself for the likelihood that your might change. Farmers can't control the weather or markets. Instead, they can focus on raising a good crop, finding new markets, building soil health and managing their costs, all of which mitigate their risk exposure. Entrepreneurs must be ruthless about where they spend their time; you can create value in the areas you can affect directly. Placing focus on what you can control and how you react to those changes is what matters the most in the entrepreneurial journey. As an entrepreneur, risk is an inevitable part of the journey. From the moment you make the decision to start a business, you must systematically reduce the risks facing your business, whether that's through focusing on product-market fit, fundraising or building your team. Farmers are exposed to huge amounts of risk, most of which they can't control. Like startup founders, they deploy sophisticated risk management strategies, including varying their crop rotations, renting land, selling crops to many different parties, and developing specialized markets. The quicker you're able to retire manageable risks, the sooner you're able to reinvest on what will make your business scale. Farming is the ultimate combination of brains and hard work. You need to have brains to figure out how to maximize the value of your crop, but once the thinking is done, there is real hard work to do. Farming is a beautiful marriage of brainpower and hard labor, and all entrepreneurs and industries could learn from it. Farmers embrace innovation. They have to because they are in a very competitive commodity business. And innovation gives you a real advantage if you adopt it early. Farmers are on the front end of willingness to take risk and innovate if there is a potential return for their produce.
India, agriculture, business, entrepreneurship, capacity building, infrastructure