Factors Affecting Development of Agrientrepreneurship in Bhagalpur District of Bihar

The present study entitled “Factors Affecting Development of Agri-entrepreneurship in Bhagalpur District of Bihar” focused on factors responsible for development of agrientrepreneurship. For this study Bhagalpur District of Bihar state was purposively selected. The list of agri-entrepreneur from five agri-based enterprise like dairy, mushroom grower, poultry, nursery grower, beekeeping were collected from the different sources like wise Krishi vigyan Kendra, line departments of agriculture, agriculture college, The Bihar State Milk Co-Operative Federation Ltd, Agricultural Technology Management Agency, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. From this list of agrientrepreneurs, twenty respondents were selected randomly from each agri-based enterprise; hence the sample size was 100. Analysis of demographic profile of respondents indicated that majority of the respondent were middle age group, general category, having intermediate level of education, more than four members in family size, marginal land holding, annual income up to 1 lacs, low level of self confidence, high level of innovativeness, medium level of achievement motivation and low level of institutional support. It was noted that maximum respondents have their own enterprises and most of them received training. It was also noted maximum entrepreneurial had less than five years of entrepreneurial experience. Respondents also have high level of planning orientation, production orientation and medium level of marketing orientation. It was noted that entrepreneurial decision making of the respondents was positively and significantly correlated with the independent variable training received, entrepreneurial experience, plannining orientation, technical and managerial constraints. Annual income of respondents was positively and significantly correlated with the variable entrepreneurial experience and land holding. Achievement motivation is the pivotal of any successful enterprise establishment and continuation and it was interesting to note that loan received is positively and significantly correlated with the dependent variable i.e., achievement motivation of the entrepreneurs. Establishment of large number of Agricultural entrepreneurships is a need of Bihar State. However, the rate of establishment and success is limited due to a large number of constraints. In order make an in-depth enquiry in to this issue, the present study was planned on the problem entitled, “Factors Affecting Development of Agri-entrepreneurship in Bhagalpur District of Bihar”. Major constraints faced by the nursery growers were lack of marketing facility, lack of skilled labour, lack of reasonable price to the product, lack of marketing knowledge and lack of training facility. The mushroom growers reported that lack of marketing facility; storage technique and facility, lack of quality spawn and non availability of skilled persons were the main constraints. The major constraints observed among the beekeepers were lack of marketing availability, obstacle at the time of migration of bee boxes from one place to another, lack of reasonable rate of honey, lack of insurance facility and lack of availability of the bee boxes. The poultry farmers reported that lack of marketing facility was the most important challenge for them. Lack of knowledge, lack of government support, lack of feed as reasonable price, lack of knowledge about important diseases were other constraints faced by the poultry growers. Major obstacles observed in dairy entrepreneurship were lack of knowledge for breed selection, lack of technical information, unreasonably low rate of milk given by the Dairy Cooperatives, high labour cost, no governmental support for financial assistance, no insurance facility provided by any agency, vaccination problem, unavailability of veterinary doctor for caring health of the animals and lack of bank loan. Further, the majority of the respondents had high level of planning orientation (81.0%), high level of production orientation (69.0%), but medium level of marketing orientation (45.0%). This study is possibly the first attempt to peep in to the challenges of agriculture based entrepreneurs of Bihar State and as such the findings of this study are likely to lead to several political, administrative and strategic implications in future. Dr.S. R.Singh Tarun Kumar Major Advisor