Multiple business ownership in the farm sector: assessing the enterprise and employment contributions of farmers in Cambridgeshire

doi:10.1016/S0743-0167(99)00004-2

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 15, Issue 4, October 1999, Pages 417-429

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-0167(99)00004-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

Multiple business ownership has become an important theme within the small firms research literature. While early studies emphasised its role in reducing business risk, more recently portfolio entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important growth strategy, particularly in sectors where economies of scale can be achieved at a relatively low level. Research studies specifically examining multiple business ownership are still scarce, but the parallels between portfolio entrepreneurship in non-farm sectors and farm pluriactivity have been noted. Although pluriactivity has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, analysis has generally focused on farm-centred diversification, rather than the wider entrepreneurial activities of the farmer. Using a survey of nearly 300 farm owners in Cambridgeshire, this exploratory study analyses the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship in the farm sector and assesses its contribution to enterprise and employment creation. The results demonstrate that a core of farmers have multiple business interests and that these additional business activities make a substantial contribution to both numbers of enterprises and employment creation. While previous studies of pluriactivity have generally used the farm business as the main unit of analysis, it is argued that including the wider business activities of the farm owner enables a more precise estimation of the total contribution of farmers to rural economic development.

References (0)

Cited by (62)

What determines the survival of farmer entrepreneurship: Micro-evidence from China
2023, International Review of Economics and Finance
Farmer entrepreneurship can effectively promote rural economic progresses, reducing the urban-rural income gap. Most of the existing literature has attached great importance to the impact factors of farmers' entrepreneurial motivation, but lacks the analysis of entrepreneurial survival. This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial survival rate of Chinese farmers. Firstly, combining the existing entrepreneurial theoretical framework and the features of China's rural economy and farmer entrepreneurship, this paper analyzes the key factors that affect the survival rate of farmer entrepreneurship, putting forward the corresponding theoretical hypotheses. Secondly, this paper adopts the micro-data of the “Thousand Villages Survey” of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2016 to implement the empirical study, and wherein the semi parametric PH-Cox estimation method is applied to verify the theoretical hypothesis. The main viewpoints of this paper are composed of (1) Among all the entrepreneurial elements, the characteristics of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial resources and entrepreneurial environment are the major factors that can affect the survival rate of farmer entrepreneurship; (2) In addition to the cognition, competence and self-owned resources of entrepreneurs, the improvement of rural entrepreneurial environment will not only directly influence the entrepreneurial process, but also effectively advance the improvement of entrepreneurial farmers' cognition, competence, and availability of resources. In this way, optimizing the rural entrepreneurial environment is the crucial way to enhance the vitality of farmer entrepreneurship.
Investigating the economic visibility and contribution of UK women in agriculture through a systematic review of international literature
2021, Journal of Rural Studies
Citation Excerpt :
An additional two studies from Canada (Sumner and Llewelyn, 2011), and Ireland (Läpple, 2012), suggest that women are more highly represented in organic production. Furthermore, seventeen studies conducted across the UK and Europe between 1992 and 2014 suggest that women are positively associated with farm diversification (Gasson and Winter 1992; Evans and Ilbery, 1993, 1996; Benjamin, 1994; Cawley et al., 1995; Ilbery et al., 1998; Caballé, 1999; Carter, 1991; Gorman, 2004; Bock 2004; Trauger, 2004; Iakovidou et al., 2009; Haugen and Brandth 2010, 2011; Ball, 2014; Heggem, 2014; Wright and Annes, 2014), and six studies between 1999 and 2016 indicate that women are associated with sustainable and environmental objectives (Trauger, 2004; Gidarakou, 1999; Zelezny et al., 2000; Goldsmith et al., 2013; Xiao and McCright, 2015; Sachs et al., 2016). In terms of business goals, recent US studies including Trauger et al. (2010), Hoppe and Korb (2013) and Ball (2014) suggest that women are associated with business goals other than profit maximisation.
The agricultural sector in developed countries has been experiencing a growth in the percentage of women, yet very little economic research documents the role and contribution of farm women across these countries. Through an interdisciplinary systematic literature review of 184 international peer-reviewed, English-language studies between 1970 and 2020 we investigate the economic contribution and visibility of women working in the agricultural sector in the United Kingdom (UK). Differences within farm women as a group are explored and used to develop a framework characterising the different economic classifications of farm women across a spectrum of economic contribution and visibility. A comparison of the economic contributions of farm men and women also reveals key differences between farming practices and outcomes. As such, the study reveals key barriers to women's economic participation and visibility in agriculture to be associated with access to land, education and organisations. These factors are evaluated in the context of wider policy. The outcomes of this study increase understanding of factors shaping women's economic contribution and visibility in UK agriculture and will inform further research investigating female participation in agricultural business management and decision making. As the UK formulates its own domestic agricultural acts, UK-wide research will be needed to inform policy and overcome barriers facing women in farming.
Agricultural entrepreneurship: Going back to the basics
2019, Journal of Rural Studies
Citation Excerpt :
Researchers had employed different definitions and typologies of agricultural diversification (Barbieri and Mahoney, 2009), as well as different terms related to that, namely pluriactivity and portfolio entrepreneurship. As farm households rely on income from multiple sources, with farm women having the responsibility in most cases for diversification activities, some authors defend that the entire household and not only the farmer should be included in the analysis of entrepreneurial processes and strategies (Carter, 1999; Rønning and Kolvereid, 2006). Nevertheless, the income potential of on-farm diversification appears uncertain (Clark, 2009; Grande, 2011; Rønning and Kolvereid, 2006), since the core business of the farm can be damaged with disproportionate amounts of time and effort oriented into secondary businesses, which may not obtain a reasonable financial return (McElwee, 2008).
Through a Systematic Literature Review, this study aims to analyse how the research in agricultural entrepreneurship is approached in the period until 2012 and compare it with the period 2013–2017, which was found by Dias et al. (2019). This comparison allows identifying which research topics are underlined in each period as well as examine different perspectives on the same topic in both periods. Based on articles from the Scopus database, this review identifies two main thematic areas in the period until 2012: “Entrepreneurial Skills and Income Sources”; and “Market and Resources”. Researchers state that farmers can be considered as entrepreneurs and as decision-makers who aim to maximize profits, developing various typologies of agricultural diversification, although conclude that entrepreneurial skills required for diversified farming are different from the ones required in conventional farming. Attending to the increasingly liberalisation of agricultural markets, the literature also focuses on the ways how farmers had recombined existing farm resources into new uses namely land, human, financial and natural resources. In both periods, we conclude that entrepreneurial skills are underlined but, in the period 2013–2017, new research topics were introduced.
What's new in the research on agricultural entrepreneurship?
2019, Journal of Rural Studies
Citation Excerpt :
On the other hand, in Sweden, some women had off-farm employment prior to becoming farm tourism entrepreneurs, which means that they not move from a position as farm woman to entrepreneur but rather from employed to entrepreneur, contrary to previous studies in other countries, what it may be related to a wish for more independence and to work from home (Petterssonn and Cassel, 2014). In this sense, some authors defend that the entire household and not only the farmer should be included in the analysis of entrepreneurial processes (Carter, 1999; Rønning and Kolvereid, 2006). The barriers for entrepreneurship in developing countries are more pronounced than in the developed Western world (Welter, 2011), mainly for women, including lack of access to credit, gender inequality, poor infrastructure, lack of access to knowledge and education, negative attitudes towards women, and few initiatives to facilitate economic and business success (Lourenço et al., 2014).
Despite the mainstream entrepreneurship research had neglected the agricultural sector, this scenario seems to have changed in the last years with the study of new and diverse phenomena in several countries around the world. This study aims to analyse the state-of-the-art on agricultural entrepreneurship through a systematic literature review and applying the co-words bibliometric technique. The articles reviewed were obtained from the Scopus database, covering journals from all subject areas. The results allowed to identify three main approaches: i) Entrepreneurial Skills and Behaviour, ii) Entrepreneurial Strategies, and iii) Community and Entrepreneurial Activity. Based on this classification, the study shows that the Entrepreneurial Skills and Behaviour are examined essentially in developing countries, focusing on the assessment of entrepreneurship programmes, oriented not only to agricultural students in higher education institutes but also to women and young farmers. Entrepreneurial Strategies of farmers are analysed mainly in developed countries, although it can be based in the diversification of agricultural and non-agricultural businesses, innovation or market channels, depending considerably on factors such as country, type of product and size. Finally, the Community and Entrepreneurial Activity focuses essentially on the impacts of food production in communities of developed countries, highlighting the social entrepreneurship initiatives at urban agriculture.
Portfolio entrepreneurship in farming: Empirical evidence from the 1881 census for England and Wales
2017, Journal of Rural Studies
Citation Excerpt :
Moreover the availability of data on farm employees allows us to distinguish farmers and entrepreneurs by employment size. The availability of census data on farm employee size for all farms allows analysis of the relationship of portfolio entrepreneurship to business growth, which is a key aspect of the entrepreneurship literature (Carter, 1998, 2001, 1999; Carter et al., 2004; Rosa and Scott, 1999). Farm portfolios can then be interpreted as a form of habitual entrepreneurship where the farmer prefers the challenges associated with diversification rather than a pure start-up.
Will future land based food and fibre production be in family or corporate hands? An analysis of farm land ownership and governance considering farmer characteristics as choice drivers. The New Zealand case
2017, Land Use Policy
Family farming in various guises has been the dominant ownership and governance system in primary production over recorded history. This outcome has been controlled by farmers and their families, possibly due to tradition, opportunities, personal characteristics, skill sets and the nature of primary production. Of these, it is hypothesised that the farmers’ personal characteristics play a major part in the choice, and continuance, of current ownership and governance systems. Equally as important, they, and therefore the land ownership system, play a part in the efficiency of production systems and improvement of the biological and production environment.
The benefits and difficulties of commonly used ownership systems in Western society are reviewed. Using a sample of New Zealand (NZ) farms, a comparison of the managers’ features for owner/operator, partnership and corporate based systems is presented. There were significant differences in many variables including the farmers’ age, education, number of children, asset levels, years on the current farm, and similar, but more importantly, the farmers in the ownership system groups had differing personal characteristics. Significantly, despite the corporate based farms employing more professional assistance, the profit levels were similar across ownership systems leaving the farmers’ characteristics the main factors correlating with system choice. However, governance systems per se are only marginally correlated with production systems and efficiency.
As successive generations of farmers are unlikely to have different characteristics, and corporate based systems continue to exhibit similar profit levels, relatively simple family based systems will continue to dominate farm land ownership and control. The trends suggest family farms will increase in size and involve family conglomerates facilitating the management of larger, and in many cases multiple, farms. While currently there are few differences in biological efficiency between ownership systems, given the efficiency benefits of size and scale, this could well change with the increase of family conglomerates. Relative to increasing corporatisation, the continuance of family based ownership and governance will also be of benefit to the environment. When developing land policies, these highlighted relationships should be taken into account. This study is a first to consider personal characteristics relative to ownership.

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text