Attitude plays a crucial role in influencing one’s behaviour with respect to a particular psychological object. To measure the attitude of farmers towards entrepreneurial climate for agrienterprise development, need was realized to devise a scale and a Likert’s Summated Rating scale was constructed by following the standard methodology suggested. Attitude towards entrepreneurial climate was categorized in six specific dimensions viz. Institutional factors, psychological factors, cognitive factors, managerial factors, sociological factors and economic factors. A total of 141 items were constructed and was sent to 124 experts through email, Google docs form and handed over personally by visiting to the experts. Based on the 43 experts’ responses 72 items were screened out for item analysis. The scale was administered to 80 agripreneurs of Uttar Pradesh. The odd-even method was followed for testing reliability of the scale and reliability co-efficient was 0.66. The validity of the scale was examined with the help of face and content validity. The scale developed finally consisted of 44 items (36 positive and 8 negative).
The focus of capacity building has been shifting from primarily production to agri-business, based on market-led integration and developing other value chains aiming at enhancing farmers' income. It requires identification and supporting of rural enterprises through technology and skill training, entrepreneurship training, market information, access to institutionalized credit, and other infrastructure related facilities.The need for appreciation of farmers as actors in the innovation system, and institutionalization of farmers' wisdom for their scalability has been realized at most levels. To develop farming as a business venture and to integrate the farmers' innovations and opportunities in secondary agriculture an action research study has been conducted in National Capital region of India. Institutional arrangement for facilitation of networking among stakeholders and resources was opined as the foremost requirement for enhancing farm income. The skills in social processes of group management and enterprise management were found lacking among the farmers. The entrepreneurial and technical trainings led to income generating activities. The price spread in major commercial crops showed that the longer chain reduced the producers' share in consumer rupee drastically which implies the production linkages need to be developed with involvement of all the stakeholders. Through the lessons and opinion of respondents, maximizing farm profitability was found to be interplay of entrepreneurial competencies, entrepreneurial climate, and farmers' innovations which suggest convergence and synergistic linkages.
Farm Innovators are regularly exchanging information and their experiences using WhatsApp messenger on their mobile phones. Most of the content shared was knowledge intensive with a mix of personal farming experiences. As Social constructivist learning theory seeks to improve socialinteractions to construct and share knowledge and the social networking through WhatsApp has proved to be potential to construct knowledge. Learning being the outcome of interactions between cognitive and psychological and the WhatsApp being the potential source for socialization and internalization promoted the creation ofsocial wealth in the form of discussion forums of Innovative farmers for learning exchange. The extension mechanism for purposeful farmer to farmer learning exchange has been created which in turnis a step towards innovative farmer led extension delivery mechanism. The potential of not only WhatsApp but other social media need to be exploited to bring location specific and commodity oriented transformative changes in the agriculture extension delivery system. The experimentation with innovative farmers is not only helping in scaling the farmers’ innovations but also institutional innovations at large. As all human resources (labour, management, innovation, creativity) are products of social relationships, no one can reach maturity without the help of personally caring people, including their families, friends, neighbors, and communities. Farms and agricultural enterprises also depend on the ability of people to work together toward the common goal of ecological, social, and economic sustainability through social networks.
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