Directing Rural Development through Non-Farm Economy Entrepreneurial Strategy

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important determinants of rural development. Elaboration of this concept in rural areas needs an entrepreneurial strategy. Nowadays, the rural development approaches have reduced their focus on development of agriculture sector and have distinguished between rural and agricultural development. Following such an approach, the common tendency of the new rural development approaches has led to a concept named rural non-farm economy. This concept is along with objects and elements of entrepreneurship. Therefore, the aim of this review study was to investigate the application of non-farm economy as the entrepreneurial strategy for rural development. In this regard, firstly entrepreneurship debates were investigated, and later the concept of rural non-farm economy were analyzed by those debates. Finally, the concept of rural non-farm economy were matched with entrepreneurship debates. The results showed that the concepts of entrepreneurship and non farm economy have common dimensions, elements and objects. The results of this study confirm the potential of rural non-farm economy for application as the entrepreneurial strategy. Moreover, requirements and challenges for application of rural non-farm economy have been discussed.