Topic: Agriculture students’ perceptions towards entrepreneurship and farming: the Slovakian case
Key words: agriculture students, entrepreneurial intention, farming, self-employment
Abstracts
Promoting entrepreneurship in general has become an important policy strategy in Europe. Entrepreneurial spirit represents a crucial aspect of running a successful business. Entrepreneurship and self-employment are terms that are being used more often when discussing about agriculture and farming. They are also key factors for the survival of agribusiness sector in the complex global economy. This paper brings a specific look into the agriculture student’s community of the country’s only agricultural university through the entrepreneurial intention survey. The main goal of the survey was to examine the attitudes of students of the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra towards entrepreneurship, self-employment and farming in order to understand better their future entrepreneurial intentions. The study was carried out on a sample of 437 students using a structured questionnaire, and additional information were conducted using the brainwriting technique at a workshop of 84 students of specialised study programmes in economics, in order to access the pros and cons of the work in agricultural sector. The paper investigates selected findings of the survey and point out personal experience level and entrepreneurial predispositions, differences between aspirations and real effort of responded students, and rural – urban aspects of their enterprising potential. The authors focus specifically on agricultural sector and tendencies of agriculture students to establish their own farm or run own agribusiness.