A Farm Business Assessment Framework: a research tool for understanding entrepreneurial farming contexts

Purpose This paper presents the Farm Business Assessment Framework (FBAF), a research tool designed for academic researchers to understand entrepreneurial farming contexts. It responds to the limitations of generic business and management models, which often fail to capture the nuances of farming and rural contexts as well as the distinctive institutional, spatial, cultural and temporal factors that shape them. Design/methodology/approach The FBAF advances McElwee and Smith’s (2012) Farmer Segmentation Framework (FSF) by incorporating Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (EST) to capture wider contextual influences. It comprises five interrelated contextual layers – individual, microsystem, mesosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem – linking personal, business, societal and institutional dimensions. The framework is informed by the authors’ insider positionalities within the agricultural industry, alongside prior ethnographic research that utilised the FSF. Findings The FBAF theorises the main influences on farming contexts across different levels, illustrating how they generate both opportunities and constraints that shape farm development strategies. It makes three contributions. First, it provides researchers with a unified framework while supporting the development of their own conceptualisations of farmers within their contexts. Second, it serves as a methodological aid, useful for empirical research into farmers’ lived experiences, particularly for scholars unfamiliar with rural and farming environments. Third, it functions as an analytical tool, enabling the construction of farm-based business and management cases. Originality/value The paper introduces a context-sensitive and multi-purpose tool for academic researchers studying farm entrepreneurship. It responds to calls for greater contextualisation in entrepreneurship research and contributes to the emerging body of work on constrained rural entrepreneurship, offering insight into the micro-, meso- and macro-level constraints and opportunities shaping farm enterprises.