Agricultural Entrepreneurship in the European Union: Contributions for a Sustainable Development

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is sometimes seen as a glimmer of hope which may bring about some contribution towards improving economic dynamics and performance, specifically in the creation of employment by young people, in general, with further educational training, greater flexibility and who are better prepared for working with new technologies. However, entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector is, in certain circumstances, viewed as being something incompatible or, at least, difficult to implement. More scientific studies in these fields could provide interesting contributions on the road to highlighting new ideas inside the farming sector. In this framework, the objective of this study is to explore the entrepreneurship dimensions within the European Union agriculture towards a more sustainable sector. In fact, without an economic dimension in farm management, its sustainability in the medium and long run may be compromised, increasing the abandonment of farming, namely in more disadvantaged regions. For this, the literature which is available on the platform Web of Science relating to the following three topics was initially analysed: entrepreneurship, agriculture, and the European Union. This literature was clustered through the VOSviewer software, an interesting tool for performing bibliometric analysis. Secondly, statistical information related to European Union agricultural entrepreneurship considering empirical approaches was also explored. The analysis carried out shows that the realities across European Union countries are, in fact, different, where the instruments from the common agricultural policies, for example, may play a crucial role in promoting more farming entrepreneurship in a more sustainable way.