Business planning

Farming: Experts hail entrepreneurship as answer to sector woes

Agricultural experts have called on the UK farming community to be more entrepreneurial in order to rescue the struggling sector, which is increasingly facing challenges and setbacks.

In a new report entitled Entrepreneurship: A kiss of life for the UK farming sector industry experts advised that farmers should do more to engage other businesses, try new ideas and be open to innovation and make better and fuller use of farm resources.

Finding farming to be far less profit-oriented than other sectors of the UK economy, the report concluded that the sector needed to take more risks and be less concerned with mere subsistence and survival, should it be able to survive setbacks like the foot and mouth crisis or the most recent flooding.

Commenting on the report, co-author Muhammad Azam RoomI of Cranfield University said: It is clear that farmers need to aspire to be successful business people. Even those who do not see themselves like that at all could learn to become more entrepreneurial.

Identifying some of the sector’s growing challenges, the report demonstrated that lower state subsidies and increasingly difficult market conditions is pushing UK farming into potentially hard times.