Farm diversification, entrepreneurship and technology adoption: Analysis of upland farmers in Wales

•Farms face pressures to adopt entrepreneurial strategies in the face of declining core income and shifting policy landscape.•Data analysis of Welsh upland farms reveals significant heterogeneity in entrepreneurial activity and technology adoption.•Four strategic stances are identified: resource maximization, core farm-focused, lifestyle and passive.•Cluster analysis of survey data finds clear support for characterizing farms on the basis of the above stances.•Pressure to adopt entrepreneurial business approaches will increase and that public policy support needs to be appropriate.

Farm businesses face increasing challenges in the face of policy reform which envisages multifunctional rural economies with objectives which span the environmental, the social as well as the production of food. This leads to uncertainties and ambiguities in the way in which farms respond to incentives and pressures to become entrepreneurial, to diversify, to become more efficient at food production and to adopt new technology. This paper examines these tensions in the context of upland agricultural business in rural Wales. Qualitative and quantitative results support a conclusion of significant heterogeneity in farm response, and highlight tensions between maintaining a focus towards current on-farm activity or pursuing entrepreneurial diversification, as well as differing levels of technology adoption in support of these income streams. Supported by a descriptive cluster analysis based on survey data, the paper proposes a new conceptual categorisation of entrepreneurial strategy, distinguished on the basis of attitudes towards on- and off-farm income generation and on stated stance towards current and future policy grant streams. The paper discusses some of the factors that may determine how particular farmers and farming businesses lie within this categorisation.