Vol. 12, Special Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
OP Parganiha, NK Toorray and Deepika Devdas

Abstract:
Agriculture plays significant role on the overall economic growth of the country, where the agro based industries are considered as broaden arm of agriculture. More employment opportunities both at production and marketing stages can be created through the development of agriculture as farm business. There is a vast scope for entrepreneurial activities in the agricultural sector, thus, agri-preneurship is need of hour to make agriculture as more fascinating and profitable venture. The present investigation was carried out with the objective to determine the entrepreneurial behaviour of agri-preneurs in Chhattisgarh state during the year 2020-21. The investigation was conducted in project mode and success stories of 45 farmers those converted themselves as an agri-preneurs have been documented under the project. The entrepreneurial behaviour of agri-preneurs was measured with respect to eight dimensions namely management orientation, decision making ability, leadership abilities, risk taking ability, knowledge of enterprise, achievement motivation, innovativeness and self confidence. The findings of the study indicated that majority of the agri-preneurs belonged to the middle to old age group with 10 to 20 years of farming experience and they were having high &higher secondary to above higher secondary level of education. More than two third of the agri-preneurs were found to have engaged in integrated farming, horticulture and agriculture along with horticulture with earning of Rs. 1000000 per annum. It could be reveal that more than three fourth of the agri-preneurs were falls under the medium to high category for all the components of entrepreneurial behaviour except innovativeness. Majority of the agri-preneurs (42.22%) belonged to high level of entrepreneurial behaviour followed by 40.00 percent of them belonged to medium category and only 17.78 percent of agri-preneurs had low level of entrepreneurial behaviour. Thus, on the basis of assessment of entrepreneurial behaviour, it can be concluded that agri-preneurs were found to possess high to medium level of entrepreneurial behaviour.