Perceptions of Smallholder Farmers' Access to Entrepreneurial Skills Training in the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality, Free State Province, South Africa

This study was conducted to determine the perception of the smallholder farmers and its impact on access to entrepreneurial skills training. A semi-structured questionnaire and a proportional random sampling technique were used to collect data from 145 smallholder farmers in the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality of the Free State Province, South Africa. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 30, along with principal component analysis and multiple linear regression analyses. The results of the study revealed that 89% of the smallholder farmers agreed and 17.3% strongly agreed that it is important to apply entrepreneurial skills in their farming businesses and that they have adopted and applied such skills. Three components (smallholder farmers' access to literacy, farmers' access to production skills training, and adoption of skills to improve farm business) were extracted using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The mean scores of the three extracted factors were found to be statistically significant at P < 0.001. This implies that small-scale farmers with access to literacy and production skills, as well as those who have adopted certain skills to improve their farm businesses, were more likely to have access to general entrepreneurial skills training. It is recommended that interventions be developed to promote farming-related entrepreneurial training to equip small-scale farmers with skills that will enhance production effectiveness and commercial market accessibility.