Abstract
Despite the abundance of agripreneurial opportunities in rural communities of Ishielu Local Government Area of
Ebonyi State, studies seem not to have captured the determinants of agripreneurship in the area. The study
employed an ex post facto research design to generate relevant data using structured questionnaire administered
as interview schedule on 120 purposively selected rural households. Data collected were analysed using
descriptive and inferential (Logit regression analysis) statistics. Results showed that most of the agripreneurs
(64.20%) were male who are within the mean productive age of 46 years and average household size of 7
persons. Meanwhile, the major agripreneurial activity of the people was farm production – arable crops,
livestock, and fisheries from where they earn an average annual income of ninety-eight thousand, three hundred
and forty three naira, twenty kobo (N98,343.20). The study identified access to credits and loans, tax rates,
agripreneurial training, income level of the agripreneur, geographical location, availability of market, fertility of
the soil, number of competitors, quantity of agricultural output, availability of social amenities, and the type of
farming system practiced as having influence on agripreneurship drive among rural households. Similarly, land
tenure system, lack of investment infrastructures, lack of technical know-how, poor training of rural households
by extension agents, lack of access to research results, high interest rate on loan, high competitive market, poor
returns to agricultural investment, and lack of access to loan as the major constraints to agripreneurship among
rural households. Based on the findings, the study recommended provision of key investment infrastructures
such as electricity, good roads, organised; and proper information dissemination to the rural households on how
to identify viable agripreneurial opportunities.
Keywords: agripreneurship, agripreneurs, investment, drive, rural, households, constraints
INTRODUCTION
The problems of unemployment, underemployment and disguised unemployment have swamped the rural areas
of Nigeria thereby creating a wide gap between citizens (Narendran and Ranganathan, 2015; Shoji et al, 2014).
In a bid to bridge the gap and ensure increased economic opportunities and food security for the rural households
has necessitated the adoption of agripreneurship (Uneze, 2013). Agripreneurship which simply means
entrepreneurship in agriculture can be seen as a process whereby farmers become determined, creative,
innovative, willing to take calculated risk, always looking for opportunities to improve and expand their farm
business (Sancho, 2010). Agripreneurship is the profitable fusion of agriculture and entrepreneurship as it turns
farm into an agribusiness. It is synonym with entrepreneurship in agriculture and refers to agribusiness
establishment in agriculture and allied sector. Agripreneurship is a concept specific to agriculture and drawn
from wider entrepreneurship. The concept is used to describe dynamic process of creating incremental wealth
from agricultural sector (Shailesh et al., 2013). The wealth is created by individuals who take the major risks in
terms of equity, time and carrier commitment of providing value to some products or services. The product or
service itself may or may not be new or unique but value must somehow be infused by an agripreneur who
secures and allocates the necessary skill and resources (Olatomide and Omowumi, 2015). Agripreneurs are
innovators who drive change in the economy by initiating new idea and creating new ways of carrying out
different activities in input supply, production and marketing in agriculture. In fact, agripreneurs should be
proactive, curios, determined, persistent, visionary, hardworking, honest, integrity with strong managerial and
organizational skills in order to identify and exploit available opportunities in agriculture. Despite the
participation of rural households in agripreneurial activities, its development has not been fully embraced.
Employing entrepreneurship skill in farming lead to reduction in poverty among the rural households, but the
extent of poverty reduction is still very insignificant, which is an indication that farmers have not fully taken
advantage of some of the agripreneurial activities or have participated to a less extent. Hence, if the current
transformation agenda of the federal government on poverty reduction through farming activities must be
actualized, there is urgent need to provide adequate entrepreneurship programme for farmers in order to address
factors that hinder the growth and development of farmer entrepreneurs (Mbam and Nwibo, 2013).
