Creation of a sustainable agricultural sector involves boosting the cooperation activities as these contribute to the societal and economic development of the farms, farmers and rural societies. This paper contributes to the literature on the analysis of the drivers and obstacles of cooperation development in agriculture. The case of Lithuania is considered as the cooperation activities are lagging behind the European Union (EU) practice here. Specifically, analysis of the public support measures and the expert survey are carried out to analyse the effectiveness of the public policy measures as represented in the relevant legal acts. The experts involve policy makers, farmers’ organisations and academia, which are the major stakeholder groups in Lithuania. The results indicate the effectiveness of the measures linked to capacity building (in the sense of human capital) requires improvement, whereas those related to financial support and promotion of the farmers’ organisations are much better perceived. Thus, public support measures are available to promote cooperation in agriculture, yet the legal system of Lithuania still requires improvement in accommodating effective agricultural cooperatives.

To survive and be competitive in the changing economic environment, agricultural cooperatives are innovating and creating more sophisticated, added-value products and broadening the range of provided services. Lithuanian cooperatives, facing the same challenges, are less flexible and adaptable to changes due to short operational history and sparse membership. Therefore, the following scientific problem is addressed: do Lithuanian agricultural cooperatives still represent a shift to servitizing? The aim of this paper is to investigate the current state of servitization among Lithuanian agricultural cooperatives, and to frame directions for further research in this novel research field. The research relies on structured interviews conducted with Lithuanian agricultural cooperatives. The results of statistical data analysis indicate a slow shift of agricultural cooperatives towards servitization, particularly related to the provision of knowledge-based and adding-value services. Identification of general and personal causes of slow servitization among cooperatives is suggested for further researches.

Maintaining cultural heritage is an essential element of any effort to realize the growth potential and promote sustainability and vitality of rural areas. Founding of traditional craft centers in Lithuania was initiated in 2009 as a way to implement heritage safeguarding measures. Scientific problem was formulated as follows: did these centers prove to be an effective instrument of heritage policy? The present paper aimed at investigating the extent, to which traditional craft centers had implemented its role in safeguarding cultural heritage, and present recommendations for the improvement. Interview questionnaire was sent to 20 municipalities and 51 LAGs, responsible for the establishment of centers. It was identified that craft centers implemented measures, related to safeguarding of cultural heritage, rather actively and qualitatively. On the other hand, not all measures were implemented sufficiently, what made the process of safeguarding traditional crafts not continuous but partly fragmented. Improvement of traditional crafts centers resource management along with promotion of cooperation between TCC, operating in the same municipality, is recommended.

This paper presents a New Social Movement approach to the studies of local food system development. It aims to identify whether local food initiatives coalesce into a movement in Lithuania, drawing on the characteristics derived from the New Social Movement theory. Discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews with representatives of local food organizations and initiatives are applied as main methods of the study. Results reveal that social processes around local food are characterized by much unified commitment of participants to a cause, moderately expressed opposition to the adversary of movement, and fainting networking among them. The evidence of all applied characteristics suggests that local food movement is present in Lithuania yet in the incoherent and insubstantial form.