Social Entrepreneurship Through Innovations in Agriculture

Introduction

Social Entrepreneurship is a branch of entrepreneurship that appears to be the need for the hour, as its motive is more noble than conventional entrepreneurship. The social entrepreneurs, consider solving the social problem first, rather than minting profits in a less span of time (Barberá-Tomás et al. 2019). As the world today is suffering from the problem of rising population, the food demands are destined to rise in the times to come. The shrinking arable land, less availability of fresh water, concentration of population in towns and cities etc is becoming a threat to the agriculture sector (Khan et al., 2020). The new techniques like aeroponics, aquaponics, and vertical farming are emerging as a potential solution to the emerging problem of food availability in times to come. The recent trends have compelled the researchers to observe that the new forms of agriculture techniques are overtaken by the large business houses, who mainly are involved in this process to exploit the existing demand of food and extract high levels of profit margin.

Food availability needs to be considered as a right for individual under “Right to live”, as guaranteed by the constitution of various countries across the globe. It is believed that the modern techniques in agriculture can maximise the yield to 36 times from the same piece of land and can use as little as 5% of the total water requirements to support irrigation (Stories, 2016). With the support of the government and Non-profit organisations, the establishment cost can be subsidised. This study considers the involvement of social entrepreneurs in the innovative agricultural practices would ensure that the purpose of innovative agricultural practices is not defeated. This study will have an implication on all the nations across the globe, especially the lower income nations, where the basic facilities is not available to the general masses.

The present study considers the needs, challenges, and innovative agricultural practices by focusing on aeroponic vertical farming, and checks the relationship between social entrepreneurs, and agriculture, and social entrepreneurs, agriculture and innovations through bibliometric analysis of Scopus database. The main idea of this paper is to explore the key words in the arena of social entrepreneurs and agriculture, and find the studies conducted considering vertical farming as an element of study.