Rural Entrepreneurship and Agribusiness

Rural Entrepreneurship and Agribusiness are interrelated with one another. Simply put, rural entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship that emerges in rural areas. In other terms, rural entrepreneurship is the establishment of industrial units in rural areas. Rural entrepreneurship, on the other hand, means rural industrialization. Rural industrialization is the most effective way to address the dual challenges of unemployment and poverty that plague the country’s rural areas.

All of the village industries have been divided into seven major categories:

Mineral-based industry, forest-based industry, agro-based industry, polymer and chemical industry, engineering and non-conventional industry, textile industry, and service industry are the seven industries.

Rural Entrepreneurship Problems

Financial constraints, a lack of technical know-how, a lack of training and extension services, management issues, a lack of quality control, a high cost of production due to high input costs, a lack of communication and market information, poor quality raw materials, a lack of storage and warehousing facilities, and obsolete and primitive equipment are all common bottlenecks in the development of village industries.

The key challenges in growing entrepreneurship in rural areas, according to the ninth plan, are:

Inadequate credit flow
Use of outmoded technologies
Poor quality standards and
Inadequate infrastructure

Lack of awareness and information about the importance of growing rural industries is one of the primary challenges in fostering entrepreneurship in rural areas. Rural entrepreneurship growth has all of the challenges that small-scale industry development experiences.

How Can Rural Entrepreneurship Be Developed?

The following methods are recommended for promoting entrepreneurship in the country’s rural areas:

A necessary component of each industry is raw material. The inability to obtain raw materials, combined with their high costs, has harmed these industries’ profitability.
Finance is regarded as a lubricant in the establishment and operation of a business.
To tackle the problem of rural industry marketing, common production-cum-marketing hubs must be established and expanded with contemporary infrastructure.
Training interventions such as Entrepreneurship Development Programs (EDP), Women Entrepreneurship Development Programs, and TRYSEM are needed to foster entrepreneurial attitudes and competencies among prospective entrepreneurs.
In other cases, the true issue in establishing enterprises is not a lack of facilities, but rather a lack of awareness of the facilities that are accessible.
Appropriate provisions must be created to provide institutional training to entrepreneurs in specialized goods and trades so that local resources can be adequately utilized.
Our collective experience demonstrates that non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, can play an important role in the development of rural entrepreneurship in the country.

Rural Entrepreneurship and NGOs

NGOs have proven to be an important agent in the development of entrepreneurship in the country’s rural areas. There are three categories of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaging in entrepreneurship development:

Primary Level NGOs

This group includes NGOs that mobilize their own resources, operate at an international level, and carry out developmental operations directly or through intermediaries. Examples include ActionAid, OXFAM, Christian Children Fund, and others.

Intermediate-level non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

These organizations obtain financing from a variety of sources, import training, and hold workshops for the target workforce. Intermediate NGOs include SEWA and AWAKE, for example.

NGOs at the grass-roots level

these are the NGOs that carry out field activities by establishing direct contact with the people on the ground (needy). RUDSETIs, ANARDE foundation, IIYW, and other NGOs are examples of this type.

The training provided by NGOs to the poor can be divided into three categories:

Stimulation: conducting EDPs and other training programs for the target individuals in order to encourage them to be more entrepreneurial.
Counseling: Providing counseling and consultancy services to those in need once they have learned how to produce a project, feasibility report, procurement of equipment and machinery, and other procedural tasks.
Assistance: Assisting the target population with product marketing and obtaining financing from financial institutions.

The following strengths of NGOs have been identified as a competitive advantage:

Low overhead and operating costs in order to reach out to the poor and needy.
Flexibility and responsiveness in operations to invent appropriate solutions
Close proximity to client groups made them sensitive to community need
Capacity for innovation and experimentation with new groups and untested development approaches
Stimulating and mobilizing interest in the community
Dependence on customer satisfaction

The following are some of the well-known flaws that NGOs have:

Role conflict between traditional areas of operation and micro-entrepreneurship development
Uncertain leadership and succession
Anti-business philosophy, lack of program integration due to a lack of understanding of the entrepreneurship approach
Inadequate opportunities to work as a trainer/motivator
Absence of impact assessment due to NGO leaders’ self-righteousness Not all non-governmental organizations are prepared and equipped to engage in this activity.