Entrepreneurship in agriculture: a literature review

Abstract

Whereas scholars in entrepreneurship have focused their studies on various entrepreneurial situations, little is known about entrepreneurship in agriculture. Using the Scopus database, we analyse 229 papers related to this topic to understand what entrepreneurship means in agriculture, why this topic is growing, and who publishes and where. This paper provides quantitative results that can be useful for scholars, consultants and decision makers. It also provides a qualitative analysis of the topic, showing a structure for the idea of change: agri-entrepreneurship appears as a new paradigm based on the implementation of deliberate strategies to respond to liberalisation and sustainability. These results are discussed while taking into account the criticism of liberalisation and sustainable concerns. We show that the debates on liberalisation do not question the legitimacy of the agri-entrepreneurship topic but rather question the way farmers undertake it and how entrepreneurship can reinforce the resilience of farms.