Understanding Entrepreneurial Skills in the Farm Context

Developing Entrepreneurial Skills of Farmers ESOF The project Developing Entrepreneurial Skills of Farmers (ESoF) is a Specific Targeted Research Project, funded under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research & Technological Development of the European Commission. The project is running from 2005-2008. The ESoF project examines the economic, social and cultural factors hindering or stimulating the development of entrepreneurial skills of farmers. The primary concern of the project is to recommend ways how conditions of the social, economic, political and cultural frame-work can be changed in order to facilitate the adoption of entrepreneurial skills for farmers and how farmers themselves can improve their entrepreneurial skills. The guiding idea comprises the persuasion that the kind of necessary entrepreneurial skills is strongly dependent on the strategic orientation of the farm. Besides recommendations a diagnostic tool will be elaborated with which farmers can be positioned according to their entrepreneurial strategy and their entrepreneurial skills. This tool can be used by decision makers to evaluate and advise farmers to become more entrepreneurial, and farmers can assess themselves, learning their strengths and weaknesses concerning entrepreneurship.