OFC 2016: Are British farmers ‘less entrepreneurial’?

UK agriculture is less entrepreneurial than many other industries, claims this year’s Oxford Farming Conference report.

But more entrepreneurial farms are more profitable – which means there is scope for British farmers to learn lessons and improve their returns as a result.

Called “Entrepreneurship: A kiss of life for the UK farming sector?“, the study was written by Graham Redman of the Andersons Centre and Muhammad Azam Roomi of the school of management at Cranfield University.

See also: The 3 Ps – what makes a farming entrepreneur

Why is agriculture considered less entrepreneurial than other industries?

Mr Redman believes it’s because farmers have historically been more focused on self-sufficiency, feeding themselves, as well as making money.

So farming businesses have evolved to be about more than making the maximum profit – they are more about longevity.

While this means farming businesses last a long time, their return on investment is not as great as for other types of businesses.

Poll: Are farming entrepreneurs born or bred?

What does ‘entrepreneurial’ mean?

A diverse businesses is not the same as an entrepreneurial business, according to Mr Redman.

Farmers who generate additional income from diversification may be running an efficient or profitable business but it doesn’t make them entrepreneurs. To be truly entrepreneurial, you need to be an original thinker.

“Entrepreneurship involves innovation,” he says . “It involves doing something new rather than just copying something that someone else has done. In that respect, if you were to start a farmhouse B&B, you’re not being particularly entrepreneurial.

“Starting a farmhouse B&B might be new to you, but you aren’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before. But if you were to start a B&B in some disused grain silos – which is an example we include in the report – then that is something new and entrepreneurial.”

Being an entrepreneur, then, involves being innovative and making use of resources that are currently redundant or inefficiently allocated.

Investment and risk isn’t necessarily entrepreneurial – it is about taking that step into the unknown or bringing something new into your sector.

How to be more entrepreneurial

Farmers seeking to be more entrepreneurial should be wary of becoming stuck in a routine, adds Mr Redman.

“You can call it a rut if you like. In a lot of farming systems, routine work quite easily takes up five, eight or even 10 hours a day.

“We have all heard the phrase that someone is too busy to make money. Farming isn’t unique like that but it is important not to be fixed on the day-to-day jobs rather than stepping back and looking where the opportunities might lie within and behind the farm.”

It is also important to exploit your skills to the maximum – and those of the people around you, as well as your other assets. Not everyone, for example, is suited to running a business that involves interacting with the public.

“Evidence suggests that people do best at what they are good at, what they enjoy doing and what they understand. As a farmer, you are more likely to be successful doing something in the food supply chain than you are going off and building a factory that makes shoes.”

Change, of course, can be scary. But it is possible to overcome that fear. “The first thing is to recognise the difference between fear of the unknown and fear of risk. People often mistake fear of the unknown for increased risk when actually it might be a much lower risk.”