Economics, Business and Management: Recent Advances Vol. 5

Agricultural extension is increasingly expected to contribute not only to the diffusion of production knowledge but also to the creation, survival and responsible growth of rural enterprises. This critical narrative review examines the conditions under which agripreneurship can be integrated into extension through digital advisory systems, business incubation, entrepreneurial capability development and producer organisations. Peer-reviewed scholarship from agricultural innovation studies, development economics, entrepreneurship and digital agriculture was critically examined, with emphasis on the distinction between service uptake, changes in practices, venture performance and wider rural welfare. Evidence is comparatively strong that well-designed digital advice can improve information access, learning and selected agricultural decisions. Its effects on yields and profits are less consistent, and observational estimates cannot be interpreted as equivalent to randomised programme effects. Incubation and business training offer plausible mechanisms for reducing capability, coordination and network constraints, but agricultural incubator studies rarely establish long-term enterprise additionality against credible comparison groups. Farmer producer organisations can serve as shared enterprise and advisory infrastructure; their achievements remain contingent on governance, working capital and equitable participation. Across these domains, access to devices, land, finance, markets and social networks conditions who can benefit, particularly among women, poorer farmers and rural youth. The synthesis develops a conditional enterprise-brokerage interpretation of extension: public-interest advice, locally mediated digital tools and accountable venture support should be combined rather than treated as competing models. Future evaluation should prioritise longitudinal enterprise outcomes, programme cost and sustainability, platform governance, distributional effects and comparative testing of hybrid institutional arrangements. Agripreneurship may enlarge extension's contribution to rural development, but cannot be assumed to generate inclusive and durable enterprises without demonstrable additionality and safeguards.