Farmers as Entrepreneurs: Developing Competitive Skills

The aim of this literature review is to consider the main issues derived from studies published on the subject of farmers' skills and entrepreneurial capacity to determine which topics have emerged as areas of research. This literature review analyzes the topics which have been the subject of farm entrepreneurship research and suggest that there are some limited emergent trends in the literature and that a number of key topics are receiving higher levels of attention than others: namely farm diversification and farmers' enterprise skills. Farming is not a homogeneous sector; farmers operate in a tightly constrained and regulated, complex and multi-faceted environment, which acts as a significant barrier to entrepreneurial activity.