THE present status of rural entrepreneurs was recently highlighted during a training programme organised by the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.

The focus of the exercise was to share current trends and contemporary ideas in managing rural entrepreneurs for improving agricultural sector in the Asian countries. Participants from the region attempted to formulate a policy for providing input to policymakers so that agriculture could be developed, and, for which, improving performance of rural entrepreneurs was necessary.

Traditionally, agriculture was taken as a family line of work rather than a commercial activity. This is why the sector and its related activities could not develop fast on a sound basis. And as such insufficient investment flowed towards this sector.

The agribusiness principally comprises micro-enterprises. The average small-town venture has slightly more than the two workers. On the other hand, a village enterprise employs an average of 1.74 workers including hired labour, paid and unpaid family workers. Just three per cent of the non-farm enterprises in small towns and one per cent in the villages have more than five workers. A sizeable majority of labour in town and village enterprises comprises family workers. Almost 24 per cent of small town enterprises report hiring of workers, compared to merely 12 per cent of village enterprises.

Agriculture is moving towards business activity and agribusiness sector is gaining its roots in the rural sector attracting many entrepreneurs.

However, given some peculiarities and technicalities in agribusinesses many potential entrepreneurs are shy in venturing into this sector.

The success of an agribusiness largely depends on well-organised, effectual and qualified entrepreneurs capable of running small rural enterprises. Encouragement of rural entrepreneurship is an imperative aspect of rural economic and the community development. There is a need to impart entrepreneurial skills to farmers so that they can tap various marketing opportunities in their local communities.

It is the time to inculcate entrepreneurship in rural localities and to pull them out of ‘grow-eat-grow’ cycle by extending financial support and promoting new technologies.

One of the key factors for economic development and well-being in the rural localities can be rural entrepreneurship — an activity that introduces a new product, creates or serves a new market or employs a new technology. Given that the rural-based agricultural enterprises can play a key role in the economic development, it is essential that they flourish and develop.

The rural society is facing challenges of high population growth rate and youth migration to urban areas. These societies are usually characterised by a low educated and less skilled workforce and weak entrepreneurial culture. A majority of rural economic development programmes and strategies do not focus on business retention, development and establishment of new business through entrepreneurial skills. Supporting local rural entrepreneurs is thus crucial as they utilise local resources, improve accessibility of products and build networks. Moreover, rural entrepreneurship will create jobs, accelerate incomes, generate wealth and improve the quality of life and well-being of rural communities.

From the viewpoint of rural development, the greatest benefit of an enterprise creation comes from improvement in efficiency, expansion of total output and diversity of the productive base. Rural entrepreneurs create income opportunities not only for themselves but also for other landless and deprived classes. In the case of rural enterprises in particular, an added benefit is to be able to reside in rural localities rather than migrating to urban areas.

With the decreasing share of agriculture in the gross domestic product , it becomes more important that opportunities in the agricultural sector should be explored. There is a dire need to give work opportunities in the rural localities by intensification of agribusiness sector.

Rural development has been a primary agenda of many governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academic institutions. Various programmes and initiatives have been undertaken for accelerating the pace of development in rural areas. However, these programmes could not bring significant changes due to lack of tested sustainable models which are generally based on the subsidies and grants whereas entrepreneurship development is based on the skills and business plans.

The writers are faculty members at Institute of Business Management Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.