- Farm Level Producers: At the individual family point every family is to be treated as venture, to enhance the production by making best use of the technology, possessions and demand in the market.
- Service Providers: For optimizing agriculture by every family business, there are diverse types of services requisite at the village level. These include the input borrowing and distribution, hiring of equipment like tractors, sprayers, seed drills, threshers, harvesters`dryers and scientific services such as setting up of irrigation amenities, weed curb, plant security, yielding, threshing, conveyance, warehouse, etc related opportunities exist in the livestock husbandry sector for providing breeding, immunization, disease diagnostic and treatment services, apart from allocation of cattle feed, mineral combination, forage grains, etc.
- Input Producers: There are many flourishing enterprises, which need critical inputs. A few such inputs which can be produced by the home entrepreneurs at the village level are biopesticides, soil amendments, biofertilizers, vermicompost, plants of diverse species of vegetables, fruits, ornamentals, root media for raising plants in pots, production of cattle feed concentrate, agricultural tools, irrigation accessories, mineral mixture and complete feed. There are good openings to support, fishery, sericulture and poultry as well, during sponsorship of critical service amenities in rural areas.
- Processing and Marketing of Farm Produce: Well-organized management of post- production processes requires higher level of knowledge as well as investment. Such venture can be handled by People’s Organizations’, either in the form of cooperatives, service joint stock companies or societies. The most successful instances are the dairy cooperatives sugar cooperatives, and fruit growers’ cooperatives in lots of States. However, the success of such undertaking is exclusively dependent on the reliability and ability of the leaders involved. Such undertaking needs good specialized support for running the activities as a competitive trade and to contend well with other players in the market, mainly the retail traders and intermediates.
Development of Agripreneurship in India
India has been considered an agrarian economy till today (Misra & Puri, 2005). There are several mechanisms worked in the Agripreneurship like forward and backward linkages with secondary and tertiary sectors i.e. manufacturing and service sectors. Opportunities in agriculture and allied sectors can be identified at different phases of agricultural process. Basically, the agripreneurial opportunities are at Input stage, Farming stage, Value chain, output processing and marketing stage and related services. Presently the scope and potential of Agripreneurial opportunities is increasing as a result of globalization and more interconnected world market. There are many potential opportunities for entrepreneurs. Agriculture process needs so many kinds of inputs likeseeds, fertilizers, pesticides and innovative and localized farm technology. So above mentioned areas create agripreneurial opportunities in the areas of developing and producing these inputs. There are very promising opportunities for entrepreneurial process in the areas like bio-pesticides, bio-fertilizers,vermicomposting, testing and a mending soil etc . The increasing focus on organic farming is opening still more opportunities. There is a lot of scopefor R&D with respect to seed development. Even these varieties of seeds are expected to serve even in unfavourable climatic conditions. For realizing maximum revenue and improving living conditions of our farming community, productivity of the crops should be improved which is possible with good management practices alongwith good quality of inputs. India can record only 50% of the average world production per hectare. Further, there is a lot of scope in the area of agro- tech products. There is a gradual shift happening from the usage of chemical intensive fertilizers and pesticides to natural manure and pesticides. This gradual shift is again opening huge potential and opportunities for production and marketing of bio-pesticides, eco-friendly agrochemicals and natural manures. At the stage of farming, the chief objective is to maximize the output and leveraging the advantage of seasons. There is an opportunity to go innovative about balance use of fertilizers and pesticides, agrochemicals, adopting multiple cropping and crop rotation to protect and preserves and enhance the quality of soil, using the agri-tech machines to reduce the cost of cultivation and drudgery of labour etc. In the post- harvest stage, the opportunities are felt in the areas of value chain, output processing and marketing. The changes happening in supply chain management of agriculture produce are opening doors for new businesses. Agriproducts processing units are booming up. There are opportunities in the area of distribution and logistics (Pandey, 2013). To specify, for agripreneurship development, there are opportunities in the areas of farming vegetables, fruits, food grains, pulses, oil seeds etc., developing greenhouse concept, herbal plantation, dairy and poultry development, animal husbandry, grading and packaging of agri-products, establishing food processing units, establishing cold. To identify the issues and challenges hindering the farmers from emerging as agripreneurs (Alex, 2011).
Areas of Entrepreneurship Development in Agriculture
Agro Produce processing units – These units do not manufacture any new product. They merely process the agricultural products e.g. Rice mills, Dal mills, decorticating mills etc.Agro Produce manufacturing units – These units produce entirely new products based on the agricultural products as the main raw material. e.g. Sugar factories, Bakery, Straw board units etc.Agro-inputs manufacturing units – These units produce goods either for mechanization of agriculture on for increasing manufacturing plants, e.g. Fertilizer production units, food processing units, agricultural implements etc.Agro service centers – These include the workshops and service centre for repairing and serving the agricultural implement used in agriculture.Miscellaneous areas – Besides the above-mentioned areas, the following areas may prove to be encouraging to establish agri-enterprises such as setting up of Apiaries, feed processing units, seed processing units, mushroom production units, commercial vermin-compose units, goat rearing farmers club, organic vegetable and fruits retail outlet, bamboo plantation and Jatropha cultivation (Man, Lau & Chan, 2002).
Agripreneurship for Women Empowerment
Agripreneurship among women is a major agenda of government for better balancing in the society and women empowerment.
- Land ownership: The foremost thing needed to be done is land entitlement on the name of female members of the household, so that women will become self-sustained, independent in decision making and most importantly to get easy access to benefit from banks and many other schemes which demands a land ownership.
- Agricultural cooperatives: In many developing countries, women work individually, often isolated, in the informal economy, operating at a low level of activity and reaping marginal income. Joining forces in small-scale cooperative can provide them with the economic, social and political leverage they need (Anyon, 1980).
- SHG: Self-help groups (SHG): SHGs are small voluntary associations of people preferably from the same socio-economic background based on the concept of solving common problems through self-help and mutual help. This existing concept of SHG can be rejuvenated with the focus on empowerment of women through agripreneurship.
- MSME in agriculture: Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in agriculture sector can play a crucial way to promote women’s economic empowerment while fighting against poverty and gender inequity. They have been identified as engines of growth by many governments, and their promotion has led to creation of new jobs for developing countries and to drive innovation and economic dynamism (Drucker, 1985).
- ICT tools: Nowadays ICT tools have been popularized and have multifarious uses such as medium to inform, aware, educate, dissemination of new technologies, assessment of new technologies, audience poll, platform for discussion among experts and farmers, information on market i.e. market price, market demands, weather forecasting etc. Mobile phone is one of easy assessable ICT tool also being used by most of the rural population.
- Policy implications: In the current decade number of policies emphasized on entrepreneurship in agriculture like DEDS (Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme.
- Agri Udaan etc. emphasizing entrepreneurship in agricultural and allied sectors.
