The topicality of the study is determined by the increasing demand for sanitary felling services currently mainly provided by manual work. Harvesting using hand-held motor instruments is a physically hard work whose costs are increasing rapidly, but labour availability is declining. In sanitary cuttings, additional complications are caused by the use of conventional machinery in harvesting, which necessitates the creation of wide (4 m) technological corridors and significantly increases the proportion of damaged remaining trees in a stand (according to past studies, a set of middle-class forest machines in thinning of spruce stands results in 4–5% of damaged trees, but in pine stands – in approximately twice less damaged trees than in spruce stands). The compact class forest machines in thinnings result in mechanical damage to not more than 1% of remaining trees. During field trials in sanitary felling 9329 trees were felled. The average productivity, working in one shift, is 5.35 m**3 hE−1 with average stands 10 cm. The cost of harvester’s productive hour is 92 € but of a forwarder it is 78. The compact class forwarder creates significantly smaller impact on the soil by reducing ruts depth and soil compaction, which is especially important in sanitary fellings and extraction of seed trees in regenerated areas.

Innovative activity of small and medium-sized enterprises is one of the factors for effective business. The aim of the article is to determine the innovative activities of small and medium-sized businesses in the frontier regions of Latvia (Latgale region), Lithuania (Vilnius region, Alytus region, Utena region, Panevezys region, Kaunas region), Belarus (Vitebsk region, Grodno region, Minsk region, Mogilev region). The novelty of the research has a cognitive character: the authors have determined the level of innovation potential for small and medium-sized enterprises in the regions, which is characterized by a complex of various resources, the amount of the production of innovative product and innovative technology, service in the regions, the branch structure of innovations in the regions, dominance of certain models of innovative entrepreneurship on the basis of innovative process organization in the companies located in the frontier regions has been established. The following methods are used for the research: logical analysis and synthesis, monographic and analytical method for studying economic theoretical and empirical sources of the international level, quantitative and statistical methods of data processing – frequency analysis, sampling; for the collection of the initial primary data the instrument of questionnaire was used.

With this issue of 2009, we bring 52 proceedings of the 98, which started life as presentations at the Annual 15th International Scientific Conference Research for Rural Development 2009 held at the Latvia University of Agriculture, in Jelgava, on 20 to 22 May 2009. In the retrospect of four months later, we can count the Conference as a great success. The theme - Research for Rural Development - attracted participation of 321 researchers with very different backgrounds. There were 4 presentations from Ukraine, 3 from Sweden, 2 from Belarus, 3 from Estonia, 1 from Belgium, 1 from India, 1 from Turkey, 10 from Lithuania and 64 from Latvia. Four independent reviewers estimated each report. The proceedings of the Annual 15th International Scientific Conference Research for Rural Development 2009 is intended for academics, students and professionals researching in the area of crop production, animal breeding, agricultural engineering, agrarian and regional economics, food sciences, veterinary medicine, forestry, wood processing, water management. The proceedings will also be useful for researchers in educational sciences.