Agripreneurial Attitude among the Farmers of National Capital Region of Delhi

Abstract

Agriculture is still the mainstay of livelihood for millions of farmers in India. However, farmers are getting disenchantment with the agriculture due to climatic and production risks and more importantly due to the poor returns and high cost of cultivation. As entrepreneurship has assumed greater significance in economic development across the world, it is essential to set an entrepreneurial culture in farming and the farmers need to be motivated to shift from subsistence cultivation to commercial cultivation. Various agripreneurs in the country have proved that agriculture can be economically viable if various agricultural enterprises are followed up with post-harvest processing, value addition and marketing. However, favorable attitudinal orientation is an important prerequisite before taking up agripreneurial venture. Hence, understanding agripreneurial attitude has been a subject of interest for many researchers as agripreneurs exhibit varied types of characteristics that constitute agripreneurial attitude. The study was conducted in selected villages of National Capital Region of Delhi. Total 110 farmers, consisting of eighty agripreneurs selected purposively based on predetermined criteria (e.g. self-starter of agribusiness, extent of commercialization, recognition and awards secured, adoption of innovation in production system), and 30 non-agripreneurs selected randomly comprised the sample size of the study. The agripreneurial attitude was measured using the modified version of the entrepreneurial attitude scale of Robinson et al. (1991). About 53 and 22% of agri-preneurs were found to possess high and very high level of agripreneurial attitude respectively. Mann Whitney U-test revealed that agripreneurs and non-agripreneurs differed highly significantly (P<0.01) with respect to all the four variables namely achievement motivation, innovativeness, personal control and self-esteem.