Abstract
This study examines the factors associated with educated young people’s interest in farming as a career in Bangladesh and identifies barriers that may limit their participation in the agricultural sector. Cross-sectional questionnaire data were collected from 509 undergraduate and graduate students across several universities, using online questionnaires and some face-to-face interviews. The analysis combines descriptive statistics, SWOT analysis, binary logistic regression, and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Overall, 49.9% of respondents expressed interest in farming, while 78.8% reported an interest in entrepreneurship. However, only 27.1% reported agricultural knowledge, 26.5% had previous farming experience, and 22.0% considered themselves to have sufficient assets to start a farm. Logistic regression identified rural residence, entrepreneurial interest, previous farming experience, savings, start-up assets, household expenditure, and the number of dependents as statistically significant correlates of farming interest. Entrepreneurial interest had the largest positive association (odds ratio = 36.18), followed by sufficient start-up assets and rural residence. The four-component PLS model reported an R² of 0.407 and a predicted R² of approximately 0.366; the classification results showed 77.95% overall accuracy and an AUC of 0.855. These findings point to a gap between interest in farming and the knowledge, experience, and resources needed to enter the sector. Policy responses should strengthen practical agricultural training, access to finance, mentoring, and awareness of existing support programmes. Because the sample was based on convenience sampling, the findings should not be generalized to all educated youth in Bangladesh without caution.
