Family Farming Knowledge Platform

Enterpreneurship skills for farming communities

The organizational assessment of NDAN member organizations and their members’ agro-technology practices as well as their food security status revealed a great area of need. For instance, with only 5 in every 10 households being poor means half of the population is at food insecurity risk. Aware that the core activities of these population is subsistence farming based, the study recommended a focus on diversifying food access to relieve reliance on own on-farm production that is facing increasing declining yields. Enhancing people to engage in income generation IG was therefore seen as inevitable. Through IG, it is believed that they will move into off-farm activities which will yield cash for their food needs as well as other basic needs. However, for this idea to yield the desired result the people require the basic skills with which to engage profitably into the IG arena. Hence, this manual is designed as a facilitation tool for trainers who will undertake such training. It is meant to enable the facilitators take the trainees through a life experience approach by realising that, (i) they a re living in poverty; (ii) they can come out of poverty and create wealth for themselves; but (iii) this can only occur if they develop entrepreneurship skills. This is because these people oftentimes engage in both on- and offfarm activities without serious planning and, as a result, they rarely produce enough food or earn adequate money to cater for their household needs. An input considered key to the success of the beneficiaries in IG is skills in entrepreneurship. These are skills that, when internalized and put to good use, will spark a change in attitude and practice so that they start looking at a broader, diversified means of livelihood that can be met with income derived from farming but also other non-farm activities. Entrepreneurship skills can also enable them take advantage of existing opportunities and innovatively use all the resources at their disposal to generate wealth. In that way they will be in position to provide a more secure livelihood.

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Publisher: Afard - The Agency for Accelerated Regional Development
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Author: AFARD
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Organization: Afard - The Agency for Accelerated Regional Development
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Year: 2006
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Type: Manual
Content language: English
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