Developing Farmers and Fisherfolks Entrepreneurial Capacity towards Community Based-Enterprise

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue XII, December 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Developing Farmers and Fisherfolks Entrepreneurial Capacity towards Community Based-Enterprise

Nerisa N. Paladan
Agribusiness Department, Partido State University, Philippines

Abstract. The study assessed the level of personal entrepreneurial competencies of farmers and fisherfolks towards community-based enterprise engagement. Specifically, it determines which competencies they excel in, recognizes the differences of entrepreneurial competency in terms of gender, business experience, and educational attainment and its correlation to age. Furthermore, the framework was developed in implementing community-based enterprises. Descriptive research was adopted; 206 farmers and 100 fisherfolks are the respondents of this study; they were surveyed, and assessed the level of entrepreneurial competencies using the Personal Entrepreneurial Competencies (PEC) Questionnaire with fifty-five questions through Likert scale. Findings reveal that farmers and fisherfolks have a moderate entrepreneurial competency; both rank first the risk-taking and goal setting as the least. Farmer self-confidence increases as they age while for fisherfolks it declines; male farmers are more persuasive, farmers with business experience have higher competency for opportunity-seeking and risk-taking, and farmers’ competency differs in terms of their educational attainment. While fisherfolks show no difference in entrepreneurial competency for both men and women, with or without business experience, and only the competency for persistence differ in their educational attainment. Developing a framework for implementing community-based enterprise should focus on intensifying the entrepreneurial competency of farmers and fisherfolks.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial competency, farmers, fisherfolks, community-based enterprise

I. INTRODUCTION

United Nations recognize the role of local communities and emphasize the relevance of leveraging their potential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (e.g., United Nations, 2015; UNDP, 2018; UNDP Environment and Energy Group, 2010). With this it can be noticed the emergence of alternative forms of community-based organizations that promote sustainable and resilient local economies (Daskalaki et al., 2015; Dubb, 2016). Community-based enterprise is one of the forms of organization that has gained prevalence, an enterprise that are conventional, owned and controlled by the members of a local community, they are recognized and its purpose is to generate economic, social and/or ecological benefits (Hertel & Belz, 2017). Through joining forces, local communities have the capacity to create enterprises that tackle local problems and generate multiple benefits unattainable to individual entrepreneurs (Peredo & Chrisman, 2006) and farmers and fisherfolks can capitalize in engaging into community-based enterprise.

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