One of the major factors that aids in economic growth, sustainability, and poverty reduction of a developing nation is agriculture. With the passage of time, contribution of agriculture in GDP seems decreasing and youths' involvement towards agricultural entrepreneurship has been increasing in Nepal. Agro-entrepreneurship is rising due to technological innovation and transformation in production process that will provide higher output aiding in income generation. This study aims to identify youths' willingness to accept agriculture entrepreneurship and provincial role for its development. This study is based on explanatory research design with 324 samples from farmers of Bedkot municipality. Both primary and secondary data are used for the study based on a structured questionnaire. Tobit model has been used to generate results, along with several variables based on descriptive and inferential analysis. The study depicts that agriculture information has positive significance with overall awareness of youths' willingness to accept agriculture entrepreneurship. Likewise, youths' acceptance of agro-entrepreneurship is significant to annual income, land size, market information centre (MIC) as well. Training and awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship need to be focused more by policy-makers. This is one of the first investigations conducted to identify the various dimensions of youths' willingness to accept agriculture entrepreneurship in the Nepalese context.
Top1. Introduction
Youth agricultural entrepreneurs came together to share their experiences and skills among the participants in the first agro Entrepreneurship Symposyum 2016 organized by 4-H Nepal in Kathmandu, which formed a network entitled 'Youth Agro-Entrepreneurs' Association' . The members of this network have been involved in advocating and facilitating the issues of agriculture and access to youth entrepreneurs in various districts of Nepal (Pande et al., 2016). Nepal is experiencing unique socioeconomic changes, including massive out-migration of the youth, which has made larger agricultural areas to become unused, particularly in those areas that are near to forests, far away from settlements and with low productivity, as examined by (Paudel et al., 2014). The youth negotiation brought together over 100 Nepali youth from various sectors are benefitted to identify and acknowledge the spirit of the Nepali youth and to support the role of the youth in the development of Nepal (ILO, 2016). Agriculture is more effective than other sectors for reducing poverty and throughout the world agriculture sector produces more healthy food for improving the livelihood of growing population, especially to the poor (World Bank Agriculture, 2014). As mentioned by Budhathoki et al. (2019), sectorial ministries of Nepal have issued and implemented gender equality and social inclusion policies in the agricultural sector as well in order to encourage participation in agricultural activities from every level.
Nepal is a small land-linked country with diverse agro-ecologies, culture, and agriculture sector, where agriculture is a key source of economic growth, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability in Nepal (Gauchan & Shrestha, 2017). Nepal is an agriculture based country and its one-third of GDP comes from agriculture. There are various opportunities in agriculture sector because of mixed agro-climate occupied in the country (Paudel, 2016; Devkota and Phuyal, 2018). In Nepal, the availability of arable land is declining rapidly. More than 55% of the holdings are smaller than 0.5 hectares (ha) in 2010 (CBS, 2011). Similarly, out of 56.6 million households, 4.25 million farming households are landless, and half of them are deprived of a piece of land, even for housing (CSRC, 2012).
The contribution of agriculture sector has shrunk to 27.6% in fiscal year 2017/18 compared to 28.8% in FY 2016/17, and the average annual growth rate of agriculture sector remained 2.9% in FY 2017/18 which is less than 1.5% compre to FY 2016/17 (MOF, 2018). For the purpose of self-employment to poor and unemployed youth, there is a provision of maximum Rs. 200 thousand per entrepreneur without any collateral or securities through Youth and Small Entrepreneurship Self-employment Programs (Sunder, 2018). In 2018, 12,622 people have been provided the orientation training, and 658 people have been provided skill-based training through Youth and Small Entrepreneurship Self-employment Programs. Further, to encourage youths with higher education to start their own businesses, the arrangements have made to provide loan of up to Rs. 700 thousand with 5 percent subsidy in interest rate against collateral of their academic certificates (Sunder, 2018).
Several questions have been aroused from the perspective of youth agriculture entrepreneurship in the context of Nepal, which needs to be answered in this study. Some questions are: what is the understanding of people about agricultural entrepreneurship? what is the best agricultural entrepreneur practice adopted in Nepal? how has agriculture been converted to be entrepreneurship? what are the factors associated with the province roles? what are the barriers to those factors? what is the strategy adopted for agricultural entrepreneur? Thus, a proper assessment is required to explore these questions in the context of Nepalese youth agriculture entrepreneurs. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyze the youth's willingness to accept agricultural entrepreneurship in Bedkot municipality, Kanchanpur, Nepal.
This research explores the interest and perception of youth toward agriculture and agricultural entrepreneurship. It also shows the need of agricultural entrepreneurship and identifies the subsidies and other facilities provided by the provincial government to youth entrepreneurs. Similarly, this research helps to determine the proper management strategy for youth entrepreneurial roles. This research is beneficial to the future researcher, youth farmer of Sudurpaschim provincial government, policymakers, various farmers, and other interested people as well.