Effects of Leadership and Entrepreneurship Training on Family Farmers’ Competencies: A Quasi-Experimental Study in Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to develop, implement, and evaluate an integrated leadership and entrepreneurship training program for family farmers participating in rural associations and cooperatives. Grounded in competency-based management and experiential learning theory, the study adopted a quantitative quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design with a non-equivalent control group. Eighty family farmers participated, comprising an experimental group (n = 40) and a control group (n = 40). The intervention consisted of a 24-h competency-based training program delivered over three months through face-to-face workshops, problem-based learning activities, and AI-supported tutoring. Entrepreneurial competencies related to achievement, planning, and power were assessed before and after the intervention using a structured questionnaire based on McClelland’s Entrepreneurial Behavioral Characteristics framework. Data were analyzed using mixed-design ANOVA following assessments of instrument reliability, normality, and homogeneity of variances. Compared with the control group, participants in the experimental group exhibited larger increases in self-reported entrepreneurial competency scores over time across the overall score and the three competency dimensions. These observed differences were consistent with participation in the educational intervention; however, because the study employed a non-randomized quasi-experimental design and relied exclusively on self-reported measures, the findings should be interpreted as evidence of associations rather than definitive causal effects. Overall, the study provides preliminary evidence that competency-based educational interventions integrating entrepreneurship and leadership-related competencies may help strengthen managerial competencies among family farmers in the context under study. Nevertheless, the absence of participant-level data for additional robustness analyses, together with the limited psychometric evidence and the lack of long-term follow-up, suggests that the findings should be interpreted with caution and confirmed in future studies employing longitudinal designs, stronger measurement procedures, and independent replication.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Sustainability, 2026 · DOI ↗