Unit 8: Entrepreneurial Development
Agripreneurship: what makes an entrepreneur, how enterprises are financed and supported, and the institutions behind agri-business development.
What this unit covers
Unit 8 has grown in weight as agricultural policy has shifted towards enterprise and collectivisation. Farmer Producer Organisations, the Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres scheme, and the incubation ecosystem are current, examinable and poorly covered in older material. The unit rewards specificity: name the scheme, know roughly what it does, and be able to say why a collective changes the economics for a smallholder.
The unit is broken into 10 syllabus areas, listed below. ASRB has set 11 descriptive questions from it that are on record, and there are 74 practice questions for it on this site.
Syllabus areas in this unit
- Concept of entrepreneurship, entrepreneur and agripreneur
- Entrepreneurial characteristics, motivation and achievement motivation training
- Entrepreneurship Development Programmes and their evaluation
- Identifying business opportunities in agriculture and allied sectors
- Project formulation, feasibility analysis and the business plan
- Sources of finance, credit institutions, NABARD and bank linkage
- Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres scheme
- Farmer Producer Organisations and Farmer Producer Companies
- Self Help Groups, microfinance and rural enterprise
- Startups, incubation, RKVY-RAFTAAR and agri-business incubators
Key concepts
Agripreneur. An entrepreneur whose enterprise is based in agriculture or an allied sector, taking on risk to convert an agricultural opportunity into a business.
Farmer Producer Organisation. A collective of primary producers, registered as a producer company or cooperative, formed to give small farmers scale in inputs, processing and marketing.
ACABC. The Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres scheme, which trains agricultural graduates and supports them with credit-linked subsidy to set up advisory ventures.
Previous year questions from Unit 8
Descriptive questions ASRB has actually set from this unit, with the year in brackets.
- Entrepreneurship development programme (2014)
- Types of entrepreneurs (2014)
- List out Characteristics of an entrepreneur (2016)
- Characteristics of entrepreneur (2021)
- What is the role and possible areas of Agripreneurship (2016)
- Role of extension agent in promoting agricultural entrepreneurship (2014)
- Critical review of different theories of entrepreneurship development (2023)
- Different govt initiatives to promote agri-entrepreneurship in India? (2023)
11 previous year questions from this unit in total. The full list is on the PYQ page.
Practice for this unit
- 74 descriptive practice questions across 5, 10 and 15 marks, in the Mains section.
- Objective practice for this unit in the MCQ section, with ASRB marking and full analysis.
- Full-length tests that draw on this unit alongside the other nine, in the mock tests.
The other units
- Unit 1: Fundamentals of Extension Education & Communication
- Unit 2: Extension Methods & Agricultural Journalism
- Unit 3: Information Communication Technologies
- Unit 4: Training & Human Resource Development
- Unit 5: Research Methodology in Extension Education
- Unit 6: Programme Planning, Evaluation & Impact Assessment
- Unit 7: Extension Management & Organizational Behaviour
- Unit 8: Entrepreneurial Development (this page)
- Unit 9: Agricultural Innovation System & Extension Approaches
- Unit 10: Gender Sensitization & Empowerment