Identifying the challenges of entrepreneurial urban agricultural businesses in Zanjan Township using grounded theory

With the expansion of urbanization and an increase in the unemployed population, agricultural activities within and around the urban areas provide a wide range of business opportunities to urban young people and university graduates, especially in developing and low-income countries. The development of urban agricultural businesses, like those in other sectors of the economy, always faces problems. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges of entrepreneurial urban agricultural businesses. The approach of this study is qualitative and grounded theory methodology was used in this study. Information in this study collected by using semi-structured interviews with 23 business owners and entrepreneurs in different agricultural fields have been used in Zanjan Township. By analyzing the content of the interviews, 116 conceptual propositions related to the purpose of the research were extracted during open coding. These concepts were categorized into 22 subcategories during axial coding and then into 7 general categories during selective coding. According to this category, the most important development challenges of urban agricultural businesses include economic, spatial - climatic, legal - institutional, scientific-educational, technological, cultural - social and challenges related to market access and business profitability.