Exploring the Factors Influencing Small Agricultural Businesses Sustainability in Saudi Arabia: A Qualitative Analysis

Given the urgent need to investigate factors that influence small agricultural businesses, sustainability is one of the most worldwide priorities in rural areas. This study explores the essential factors influencing small agricultural businesses’ sustainability within this context. The small agricultural businesses’ sustainability factors were identified by doing 41 interviews with small farmers that were analyzed through the Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification software (MICMAC) method, which is used to examine the strength of the relationship between small agricultural businesses’ sustainability and significant factors based on their influence and dependence power. We found approximately 44 sustainability factors of small agricultural businesses; the most common are 29 factors/concepts besides sustainability. We employed the collective cross-impact matrix to find the independent, relay, and excluded factors for a more in-depth analysis of the most influential factors. Then, we found that 17 were independent, nine were relay, and three were excluded. The results showed that the very important of these factors, which have strong effects on small agricultural businesses’ sustainability, is determining a percentage of profits for continuous development and improvement, determining crops compatible with the type of farm soil and water, financial transactions documentation, capacity to use loans for expanding the farm, percentage of cultivated land out of farm space, periodic analysis of soil and water, Property ownership, activating the role of associations in providing services, keeping up with renewable and alternative energy innovations, keeping up with government laws and regulations of the agricultural sector, and agricultural associations services for farmers.