Socio-economic Determinants of Agripreneurship Choice among Youths in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

The study determined effects of socio-economic characteristics of the youths on agripreneurship choice. The study adopted a multistage sampling technique in eliciting data from one hundred and eighty youth agripreneurs using structured questionnaires. The study also employed percentage, mean and probit regression analysis statistics to realize the objectives. The result showed that about 60% of the youth agripreneurs in Ebonyi State, Nigeria were male who are within the mean active age of 27 years and earn a mean annual income of N77, 333 and average household size of five 5 persons. The agripreneurial choices made by most youths were; farm production (crop and livestock production), farm input supply, agro-processing, and marketing/distribution. Age, marital status, household size, education, annual income, source of capital and family agripreneurial history have strong significant effect on the agripreneurial choice among the youth. Agripreneurship education and training should be introduced at tri-aggregates levels of agribusiness to ensure capacity building among the youth for diverse agro-enterprises.