An Examination of Barriers to Development of Agro-enterprises in Golestan Province of Iran

This qualitative research was carried out to identify barriers to development of agro-enterprises. The required information was collected, based on the framework of research protocol and twelve leading questions, by a semi- structured interview and a sample of 43 entrepreneurs and managers of small agro-enterprises. The content of interviews were analyzed by content analysis technique and the results of this process was the extraction of 107 items representing the barriers to development of agro-enterprises. A complete list of items was categorized, in relation to their conceptual affinity, to five thematic classes as follows: natural factors; production factors; complexity of nature and process of agro-businesses; development of agricultural markets; and environment and context of agro-enterprises. The results indicated that the following barriers have the highest frequency: incidence of natural calamities; low quality of existing inputs in the markets; time lag between making the initial investment and profit realization; fluctuations in agricultural markets in relation to imports, exports, pricing policies, and market regulation; and difficult requirements to access bank credits.