Entrepreneurship in agriculture is becoming of greater importance with the changing framework conditions for agricultural production. The present dissertation analyses this topic from different angles in order to gain a comprehensive picture of the current situation in Germany and to provide politicians, stakeholders and farmers with fundamental insights and implications. Therefore, it consists of three contributions covering different aspects: the first one identifies which different farmer types exist within a comprehensive sample of German farmers in order to generate a starting point and an orientation for agricultural policy design. Three clusters can be identified; conventional growers as important actors for efficient agricultural production, versatile youngsters as innovators within the sector and family-based farmers as important actors for maintaining vivid rural areas. The second contribution sets up which different strategic entrepreneurial choices in agriculture exist and aims at explaining which factors determine the choice of a certain strategy. In general it can be distinguished between reduction, continuation, expansion, diversification and the dual strategy of expansion and diversification. Analysing determinants, strong effects are observable particularly within the area of personal factors, such as creativity or risk attitude, as well as family support. Finally, the third contribution analyses the inner drivers of entrepreneurial action; farmers’ values in order to get a deeper understanding of the underlying motives. Farmers of the sample first and foremost prioritise self-transcendence values followed by openness to change. Conservation and self-enhancement are ranked to be less important within farmers’ value priorities. Furthermore, three different value portraits are identifiable within the sample. These groups differ significantly among other things in their risk attitude and involvement in structural diversification. For the analyses unsupervised machine learning methods are applied in contribution one and three next to a multinomial logit model in contribution two and multidimensional scaling in contribution three. Implications for farmers, policy as well as for actors within the sector are derived.2021-06-1
