Non-Farm Entrepreneurship of Farmers in West Bengal: A LISREL/Logit Analysis

For rural industrial growth, substantial amount of investment is required in the non-farm business sector. In a predominantly agrarian economy, such investment may have a possibility to come from the landowning farmers. In other words, growth of rural industrial activities depends, to a large extent, on resource transfer from agriculture to non-agriculture, and such transfer is largely dependent on farmers’ attitude towards non-farm entrepreneurship. In this context, this study seeks to identify the determinants of non-farm entrepreneurship among farmers. West Bengal has experienced a relatively high agricultural growth in the last two decades. But, in the present study, wealthy farmer has been found to be less likely to become non-farm entrepreneur. The government needs to undertake necessary measures in order to attract the wealthy group of farmers towards the realm of non-farm manufacturing sector. In addition to wealth, the other variables like age of farmer, farmer’s marital status, financial family support, marriage relationship with non-farm business family, fate/work-effort, and attitude towards risk have been found to be important determinants.