Domestic and donor-driven development agendas for African agriculture are spurring smallholder family farming as a catalyst for food security and poverty reduction. Family farms are also the backbone of agriculture in the European Union, although the process of concentration has gone further than in Africa. European agricultural policy reforms now...

All businesses need to innovate if they are to thrive, and family farms are no exception. By thinking ahead and developing new approaches, farmers can increase output, develop new and improved products, diversify and tap into new income streams, and remain environmentally sustainable. Innovative farms are more likely to weather...

13 farmers’ organizations from eight countries within the Baltic Farmers’ Forum on the Environment (BFFE) present their contribution for sustainable farming around the Baltic Sea. Farmers are aware of their key role in water management in light of the sensitive Baltic Sea, and as part of the overall sustainable development...

The Lithuanian Goat Breeders Association, headed by the farmer Andžela Dalia Ėmužytė, has already prepared more than one project under the action area “National Rural Network” of the 2007–2013 Lithuanian Rural Development Programme measure “Technical Assistance”. Goat milk cheeses, produced at the farm of the farmer A.D. Ėmužytė, have become...

The EU’s dairy sector is experiencing transitional pressures following the sector’s shift in approach to milk quota support. Dairy businesses can assist this transition by using RDP support available for improving the cost effectiveness of their production systems. Members of a milk cooperative (called Dzūkijos pienas) in southern Lithuania were...

A young female farmer in Lithuania benefited from EAFRD business start-up support to establish a modern, profitable farm. The support helped her to plan her business more effectively and enabled her to buy new equipment to make her farm efficient and competitive.   

Structural changes in agriculture have been going on in many countries all over the world during the last two decades. Developments were forced by radical reforms of countries concerned resulting in to establishing new farm structure. Large scale farm systems were broken up and tens of millions of small farms...

Small-scale forestry – here meaning all activities related to forest ownership, management and enterprise – can contribute significantly to social and economic development when the circumstances are right. This issue of Unasylva examines the conditions and support that make it work. We don’t define “small” by numbers, but use the...

In this article it is developed, based on existing data and post-socialism discourse, a theoretical perspective on the research into the privatization of agriculture in the Baltic republics. As much as estate ownership in the 19th century, small farming established in sweeping land reforms characterized Baltic agriculture between the World Wars....