Business survival in agriculture: the case of farming companies in los Ríos Province

Abstract

This study examines business survival in the agricultural sector of Los Ríos province, Ecuador, focusing on firms engaged in cocoa, banana, and African palm cultivation. Business survival, measured as firm age, is analyzed as an indicator of permanence and stability within a sector that plays a strategic role in the regional economy. The objective was to assess whether significant differences exist in business survival according to the type of economic activity and the canton of location. A database from the Ecuadorian Internal Revenue Service (SRI) was used, which was first depurated to remove incomplete or inconsistent records. The information was organized in Excel and subsequently processed in SPSS. The variable of firm age was constructed from the official start date of operations, and descriptive statistics of central tendency and dispersion were calculated. As the Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk normality tests rejected the null hypothesis of normal distribution (p = 0.000), the nonparametric Kruskal–Wallis test for independent samples was applied. Results indicated statistically significant differences in firm age across economic activities (p = 0.037), with banana and African palm enterprises showing longer survival compared to cocoa. In contrast, no significant differences were found across cantons (p = 0.345), suggesting relative territorial homogeneity within the province. It is concluded that business survival in the agricultural sector of Los Ríos is influenced more strongly by the type of crop than by geographic location, highlighting the need to strengthen the most vulnerable subsectors.