Research & Reviews: Journal of Agriculture and Allied Sciences
MenuISSN: E 2347-226X, P 2319-9857
ISSN: E 2347-226X, P 2319-9857
Kriti Yadav*
Amity Business School, Amity University, Madhya Pradesh, India
*Corresponding Author:
Received date: 05/08/2021; Accepted date:19/08/2021; Published date: 26/08/2021
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Agripreneurhsip is the key to improve the condition of farmers, to generate employment and to develop the rural areas. In India, there is huge scope of developing the agripreneurs in various sectors. Indian government has launched various programmes which promotes the agripreneurship in India. The Employed workforce in agriculture is declining every year continuously abandoning the agriculture sector. Madhya Pradesh is an agrarian state which contributes in Indian GDP and exports. But unfortunately, more than 26% of the rural people in the state are below poverty line and MP is among those 7 states which accounts for 87% of farmers suicide. Paper explains the importance, need and scope of agripreneurship in Madhya Pradesh and suggests adoption and promotion of agripreneurship in the state. The government shall take into consideration that more efforts are required to improve the condition of the state farmers and rural people.
Entrepreneurship; Agripreneurship; Agri-startups; Agriculture; Innovation; rural development
Indian economy is an agrarian economy. More than 70% of the rural households depend upon agriculture. As per World Bank, more than 40% of the total workforce is employed in agriculture sector. Agriculture contributes around 16% to the GDP. By the year 2035, India’s population is likely to be around 1.5 billion while contribution to overall employment is much less and is likely to reduce further considerably. Producing food to meet our future growth needs and to provide employment for buying food remain the key concerns of agriculture.
Indian farmers have brought the country among the top global producers of wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, milk and flowers. Approx. 85% of India’s farmers are in small and marginal category, 65% of farming is rain-fed. But due to the low returns, high input cost, the consequent inability to repay farm loans and even small debts, have made agriculture, unviable for small and marginal farmer [1].
“The total number of operational holdings in India has heightened from 138.35 million in 2010-11 to 146.45 million in 2015-16 showing an increase of 5.86%, whereas the total operated area in the country has declined from 159.59 million ha. In 2010-11 to 157.82 million ha. in 2015-16 showing a decline of 1.11%, also the average size of operational holding has reduced to 1.08 ha. In 2015-16 as compared to 1.15 in 2010-11 (Agricultural census 2015-16). In India the small and marginal holdings together (0.00-2.00 ha.) constitutes approx. 86.08% of the total holdings while their share in the operated area stood at 46.94%.
Entrepreneurship in agriculture has been linked to strengthen growth, boosted creation of wealth and quality. With advance industrial and entrepreneurial education practice, entrepreneurs can take advantage of huge human resource availability.
It is clear that the agriculture sector in India has a very huge potential to contribute in national income and at the same time it can provide direct employment and income to the numerically vast and weaker section of the society and agripreneurship is not only an opportunity is also a necessity for improving the condition of the agriculture sector and rural area.
A well-developed and well managed agribusiness system can enable millions of farmers and agripreneurs to take advantage of the upcoming opportunities of the agriculture and allied sector. The development of agribusiness sector is the need of future for improving rural employment, food security and the living standard of rural peoples in the country [2].
There are many opportunities in agriculture and allied sectors which are needed to be explored more and practiced to get a sound economic benefit and policy implementation by government can make agriculture more attractive and remunerative for farmers and the future generations.
Agripreneurship development will help the economy to boost the identified strengths and to achieve astounding growth in primary sector and will contribute for rural development; also it helps in achieving balanced economic growth. It is believed that sustainable agribusiness ventures will boost job-led economic growth in rural areas. The Agricultural activity can a better positioned as a more profitable economic activity by merging the same with packaging processing, and storage
activities. So, there is extreme need of making suitable policies and frameworks with action plans for developing agripreneurship with establishment of several support systems to incubate the agripreneurs in rural India.
According to Gupta rather than looking only in one sector, one should look for more business options in terms of by-products units or downstream units, as it will provide more leverage to the agri-business firms in terms of competitiveness and government should also encourage the establishment of downstream by-product units.
As entrepreneurship has assumed more significance in economic development across the world, it is very important to set an entrepreneurial culture in farming and the farmers need to be motivated to switch from subsistence cultivation to commercial cultivation and for that understanding agripreneurial attitude is very important.
Indian agriculture sector has huge potential to grow more efficiently and can generate employment and enhance the lives of rural people. Agripreneurhsip can not only help in boosting the usage to technology in the agriculture sector but the products yielded can be of better quality providing healthy life to the people [3].
“The application of entrepreneurial principles to identify, develop, and manage viable agricultural Enterprises /projects optimally and sustainably for profit and improved livelihoods”, Mukembo. Agripreneurship converts agriculture into an entrepreneurial activity. By adopting innovation and creative ideas in agriculture and allied activities, an agripreneurs can drive the changes in rural economy. An agripreneurs is a risk taker, an innovator, creates new and different ways to do things, and creates new market by tapping new opportunities.
The concept of an “Agripreneur” is gaining ground in the agriculture sector in the country. The agripreneur is one who plays the role of an entrepreneur in the field of agriculture and NABARD is at the forefront of pioneering this concept.
Government policies supporting and promoting agripreneurship
Considering the new era of agriculture, the Indian government launched many schemes, programs , established incubation centers etc., which supports and promotes agripreneurship some of them are :-
âÞã Startup India is the scheme which promoted
âÞã startups in all the fields. This scheme aims in developing and providing various supports to the new entrants who are willing to establish their own startups. This scheme provides managerial support, financial support, etc. Under this scheme there are approx. 79000 total startups registered out of which approx. 3000 are agri-startups.
âÞã Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and NABARD collaboratively initiated the scheme which promotes people to become an agripreneurs, also this scheme provides educational, technical, financial support to them also. Under this scheme there are approx. 30000 agri-ventures which have been registered till date.
âÞã AIM is an Indian government’s flagship initiative to encourage the innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
âÞã AIM’s goal is to develop new policies and programs for nurturing innovation in various sectors of the economy, to provide platform and to collaborate opportunities for different stakeholders, to create awareness and to create an umbrella type structure to overlook innovation ecosystem of the nation. Under the scheme, the established incubation centers are in Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi.
âÞã This scheme was launched to promote modern dairy farms for clean milk, to encourage conservation of good breeding, to generate self-employment and provide infrastructure mainly for unorganized sector. Every year approx. 25000 people are getting benefits from the scheme.
âÞã Venture Capital Assistance is the scheme in which interest free loan is provided as financial support by SFAC to qualifying projects so that they can meet the shortage in the capital requirement for implementation of those projects.
Agri-ventures registered in Various States of India. Below are the top states having highest numbers of agri-ventures registered under Startup India and ACABC scheme:
Total numbers of agri-startups registered under the scheme are approx. Also, Many Incubation centers and accelerators to promote agri-startups have been established by Indian government and some of the successful agri-atartup focused incubators and accelerators are:
Agripreneurhsip as a tool to generate employment during the past decade, the workforce employed is declining continuously every year and this could be because of people switching to other sectors or the migration of people from rural to urban areas.
It is extremely difficult to image, that feeders of the nation are switching their jobs. What will happen if the farmers keep on switching to other sector? Farmers feed that nation but unfortunately, the feeders of the nation are unable to feed their family properly. Most of the value of their efforts is usually been taken by the middlemen which are between the farmers and the final consumers. It is the money making people or we can say business people who make the use of hard work of these famers and gains a lot of profit, leaving these hard working, agriculturists or farmers with the burden of hefty loss.
An entrepreneur generates employment by its business. To develop any business resources such as financial resources, human resources, and natural resources are required. The Innovative concepts and the new technologies are very crucial to grow the business.
Entrepreneur merges all these resources, innovative ideas, and new technologies and turns it into a profitable business enterprise and generates job opportunities. Entrepreneur plays an essential role in generating employment opportunities besides setting up the new business enterprise. Or through expanding an existing business, they generate job opportunities. One of the most important advantage of entrepreneurship is that they generate employment opportunities.
Implementing the thought and practice of entrepreneurship in the field of agriculture will generate an ample range of economic benefits like increased agricultural productivity; will create new business ventures, more jobs, more ground breaking and innovative products and services, will develop the rural areas & also will increase the wealth. Sah stated that “developing entrepreneurs in agriculture will solve the entire problem like, the burden of agriculture, generate employment opportunities for rural youth, control migration from rural to urban areas, increase national income, support industrial development in rural areas, reduces the pressure on urban cities.
There are many consultancies and organizations which are promoting agripreneurship, also training people to empower them in the field of agriculture and allied activities. Many incubation centers are promoting this too. MANAGE has launched its premier program for empowering and promoting agripreneurship [4].
Agripreneurship not only solves the huge and the common problem of unemployment rural development etc, it also helps in eliminated several environmental problems as well.
Now-a-days, the youths are adopting the entrepreneurship in agriculture very rapidly. Most of them are quitting there high paid jobs and turning into agripreneurs.
Some of the examples of successful agripreneurs who found the ways to eliminate various issues are;
From above examples it is clear that agripreneurship will not only benefit farmers/people economically but it will also empower them, will generate employment opportunities, will create new market opportunities, will help in reducing cost, saving, power, saving water, saving environment and eliminating other farming issues Through agripreneurship we will be able to create a sustainable environment while achieving sustainability in agriculture.
Madhya Pradesh has a very large area, and it relish diverse climatic and soil conditions which is good enough for a wide range of agricultural products. The agriculture sector in Madhya Pradesh is the backbone of its economy. It accords almost 1/4th of the total Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and is the main source of employment for more than 65% of the total state population and includes about 60-75 % of the total state rural income [5].
In Madhya Pradesh, there are more than 26% of farm households with income which are below poverty line, with this percentage; Madhya Pradesh stands on 4th position among the states with rural household below poverty line, whereas in India there are approx. 22% rural household which are below poverty line.
Besides this, Madhya Pradesh is among those 7 states which accounts for approx. 87% suicide among the farmers. The main reasons due to which farmers are in distress in Madhya Pradesh are; debt due to crop failure, cash crunch, costly farm inputs, mandi issues, delayed payments , marketing issues, inadequate banking infrastructure in rural areas.
As per economics times, Madhya Pradesh has the largest certified area of 2.32 lakh hectares for organic farming (a total 7.23 lakh hectares) in India. Madhya Pradesh is among those states where flower productivity is medium, whereas it has land which is 80times higher than that of Mizoram, where productivity is abnormally high (Horticulture statistics). Madhya Pradesh accounts for 2.8% of registered bee entities and 3.19% bee colonies.
If we talk about agripreneurs in Madhya Pradesh, as per State-wise report of ACABC (2020), Madhya Pradesh accounts for only 5% of registered Agri-ventures, standing at 7th position. In Madhya Pradesh, there is high scope and need of agricultural innovation, and rural empowerment, and agripreneurship can be one of the major steps, towards developing the rural area of the state [6].
A switch from agriculture to agribusiness is being considered as an essential pathway to revive the agriculture. With better industrial and entrepreneurial education discipline, entrepreneurs will take advantage of the vast human resource availability. Madhya Pradesh has high scope in Apiary, Organic farming, Floriculture, Agro-tourism, sericulture and other untapped areas as well. Agripreneurship can empower rural people and help in their financial development. Government of Madhya Pradesh should take rigorous steps to promote agripreneurship in the state.
Agripreneurship can definitely boost the growth of rural people and will aid in economic development of the state. Also, awareness level among the people should be increased to promote agripreneurship in
the state. Madhya Pradesh really needs to boost agripreneurship. Effective policies and other benchmark strategies from other successful states like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh can be adopted; various awareness programs and training camps shall be organized.