Establishing a Graduate Agropreneur Business Model for Food Security: A Case Study of the Melon Manis Terengganu (MMT) Fertigation Project

Abstract

Revitalizing Malaysia’s agriculture, to cater to food security issues, has become a priority, given the current economic conditions faced by the government, due to the worldwide COVID19 pandemic. There are, however, a set of complex issues, which involve human capital development, trade agreements, domestic structural problems, and the appropriateness of techniques that must be tackled. Graduate agropreneurs, though, seem to be the future of the nation; while they, continue to struggle with profitability in these difficult economic times. The agricultural industry, however, supports the view that through business model innovation, farms can increase their competitive advantage. This paper identifies and describes some of the elements needed for these graduate agropreneurs when they consider business model innovation. A qualitative approach was used in this study to interview successful graduate agropreneurs involved in Melon Manis Terengganu (MMT) fertigation farming. The paper concludes that the relevance of a business model, in agriculture, relies on the fact that global competition and technological advances urge agropreneurs to look for new business structures and new ways to interact within the business environment. On the other hand, the agropreneur projects should take into consideration the viability of the agriculture projects to encourage a new generation of farmers; the young, energetic, and knowledgeable agropreneurs, to venture into high technology farming which also has substantial income potential. All factors, however, merit attention when graduate agropreneurs develop new business models for their farms.