Few female farmers are participating in the sector due to various gender-based challenges that they face. The purpose of this study was to investigate prospective farmers’ motivation and their personal attitude to starting their own businesses, as well as their perceptions of barriers to successful business start-ups in the sector. The Prospective Farmers Profile Questionnaire was distributed to 421 prospective farmers (agricultural students at six institutions of higher learning in South Africa). There was an estimated 3,486 students enrolled for various agriculture-related qualifications in the country when this cross-sectional, quantitative study was carried out. The aim of the study was to investigate perceived gender-based barriers to business start-up amongst prospective farmers in SA. The study found perceived barriers to be either intrinsic, (such as, risk aversion, innovation and self efficacy) and extrinsic, examples being, social cultural, political skills and access to land among others factors. The study also intended to find out if (1) motivation to start a business (2) taking responsibility (entrepreneurial orientation) and (3) entrepreneurial intention, were predicted by a number of select business start up factors. The findings were that motivation was predicted by only one business start up factor, socio-cultural forces; while four key factors; motivation, proactiveness, creativity and socio-cultural forces did predict taking responsibility (EO). Entrepreneurial intention (EI) is predicted by three key factors, namely socio-cultural forces, motivation and creativity. It is recommended that prospective farmers be introduced to the importance of social networking and socio-cultural forces in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, entrepreneurial education is required from government, institutions of higher learning and other organisations to educate prospective farmers on the influence of barriers to business start-up.The study was conducted on undergraduate agricultural students and should be extended to post-graduate farmers in South Africa, that is practising farming. A comparison between prospective farmers and prospective entrepreneurs from other disciplines should also be undertaken.This is a South African study and the results cannot be generalised. Therefore, the study could be expanded to other regions and future comparative studies could be done. / Applied Management / D. Phil. (Entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Management Sciences)

Income inequality is prevalent in both developed and developing countries. In all of these countries there are workers who are highly paid while others are given very low wages. The disgruntled low-paid workers in these countries usually force their governments to intervene in the labour market and introduce the redistributive policies like the minimum wage policy. Governments usually accede to these demands of low-paid workers because they do not want to invite political troubles. That led to an increase in the number of countries using minimum wage policy as redistributive mechanism in the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Minimum wage policy is, however, a very controversial issue. Supporters of minimum wages regard the policy as ideal because it provides social protection to un-unionised and low-paid workers with little or no bargaining power. The opponents of the policy on the other hand argue that wages in the labour market should be determined by the forces of demand and supply. It is argued that wages that are artificially determined lead to the rationing of jobs and displacement of the very same low-paid workers that the policy is intended to protect, as employers are forced to replace unskilled workers with skilled workers and machines. South Africa’s agricultural sector workers were among some of the least paid workers in the country. Employers were able to exploit these workers because they were not protected by any labour legislation that workers in other sectors were afforded. Farm workers were only protected by common law. It was only in the 1990s that labour legislations like Basic Conditions of Employment Act, Labour Relations Act, Employment Equity Act, Extension of Security Act and Tenure Act and Skills Development Act were extended to the agricultural sector in an attempt to protect the working conditions of vulnerable workers. These acts as well failed to improve the working conditions of the agricultural sector workers and that prompted the Minister of Labour to instruct the Director-General of Labour to conduct the necessary investigations to see if it could be necessary to introduce minimum standard of employment in the sector, including minimum wages. That led to the adoption of Sectoral Determination 8 of 2003 which introduced sectoral minimum wage in the sector. The sectoral minimum wage which came into effect in 2003 was increased annually by the rate of inflation plus one per cent. It was only in 2013, after the Western Cape farm workers went on strike for higher wages, that the minimum wage was raised by 52 per cent. As argued by the opponents of minimum wages, job losses occurred among unskilled workers. The implementation of minimum wage policy in the agricultural sector was problematic, as the policy was not properly complied with due to several compliance concerns. Apart from there being insufficient inspectors to monitor and investigate cases of non-compliance, inspectors were under-trained and under-equipped. Fines imposed on offenders were too small, which further encouraged disregard for the policy. / Economics / M. Com. (Economics)

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att göra en jämförande studie mellan faktorerna som enligt en teoretisk ram påverkar en miljöinvestering och faktorerna som ingår i ett företags bedömnings-modell. Respondentbolaget begärde i ett tidigt skede att få vara anonymt och benämns därför som Företaget. Det är en multinationell koncern med verksamhet i många skilda branscher, men med fokus på norden och produkter som kan kopplas till lantbruk. Den teoretiska referensramen har sin utgångspunkt i begreppen värde och investering samt hur deras koppling till miljö och miljöinvesteringar för att identifiera de faktorer som påverkar en miljöinvestering. Faktorerna som ingår i den teoretiska referensramen och som jämförs mot respondentbolagets faktorer är:  Investeringens värdetillförsel  Investeringens miljöpåverkan  Hur investeringen påverkar produktionsförutsättningarna  Krav från samhället  Kundkrav Kopplingen däremellan bedöms enligt en femgradig skala. Informationen från Företaget inhäm-tades genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med representanter från Företaget. Slutsatsen för detta arbete är att Företaget har identifierat samma faktorer som den teoretiska referensramen. De använder dock mätetal som inte fullt ut reflekterar faktorerna. Den största avvikelsen är bedömningen av en investerings värdetillförsel, då Företaget fullt ut införlivar det producerade värdet samt det faktum att en miljöinvestering skall ses som irreversibel. Enkelhet premieras hos Företaget och det är för att prioritera modellens användbarhet, som Företaget väl-jer att acceptera brister i bedömningsmodellen. För att förbättra bedömningsmodellen bör Företaget därför införliva nya mätetal som till större del reflekterar faktorerna som påverkar en miljöinvestering / The purpose of this master thesis is to present a comparison between the factors that affects an environmental investment. This is done through applying a theoretical framework on the factors affecting a company’s existing appraisal model for environmental investments. The company that was a part of this thesis asked at an initial stage for confidentiality, therefore it is called the Company in this thesis. The Company that contributes with the appraisal model is a multination-al group with operations in many different industries, but with a focus on the Nordic countries and products that may be linked to the agricultural sector. The theoretical framework has its base in the concepts of value and investments and their connection to the environment and the envi-ronmental investment. The identified factors in the theoretical framework are:  The investment’s addition to the value creation to the company  The investment’s environmental impact  How the investment affects the production  Demands from society  Customer demands From these, the factors affecting a company’s existing appraisal model were compared and their connection to theoretical framework was judged according to a 5-grade scale. Information from the Company was acquired through semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Company. The largest deviation is how the company considers an investment’s contribution to the produced value. Because of this imperfection does the company's model not fully incorporate the produced value and that an environmental investment is irreversible. The overall conclusion is that the Company has identified the same factors as the theoretical framework. The Company has though chosen to use their existing methods and performance indicators that don’t fully incorporate the factors in the theoretical framework. The largest devia-tions are how the company considers an investment’s contribution to the produced value and that it should be considered as irreversible. The Company must therefore in order to enhance their appraisal model develop new performance measures for the factors.