Consumer decision making is one of the most relevant topics in marketing. Therefore, organizations endeavour to create products in a way that correspond to their customers’ needs and preferences. The emerging worldwide interest in healthy lifestyle and organic products could become the key success factor for food producing organizations. The article aims to determine the product attributes affecting consumer’s choice of a milk product in Lithuania. The method of Conjoint analysis was chosen for the research. The research was provided as a repetition of the same research, done in 2009. According to the principles of the Conjoint analysis, six attributes of milk were named: ‘Country of origin’, ‘Naturalness’, ‘Package size’, ‘Package type’, ‘Richness’, and ‘Price’. Each of the attributes was divided into several levels. While analyzing the structure of milk market in 2014, four market segments were distinguished: ‘Irrationally price concerned’, ‘Rationally price concerned’, ‘Ethnocentric ecologists’, and ‘Richness concerned’. Such segments like ‘Ethnocentric’, ‘Price-and-Richness concerned’ or ‘Ethnocentric price-concerned’ have disappeared from the market during the five-year period. According to research results, following suggestions were made for the companies dealing with the milk market in Lithuania: first of all, a company has to make a decision about the segment to work with; afterwards, based on the results of conjoint analysis (conditional utilities of attributes levels), optimal propositions for every particular segment have to be composed.

The paper aims at analyzing the development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in the field of culture, arts and the protection of cultural and national heritage, and their importance in shaping the cultural functions of rural areas of Poland in the context of their multifunctional development. The research has been conducted in the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voivodship. The data have been obtained from the foundations and associations database published by the Stowarzyszenie Klon/Jawor (the Klon/Jawor Association), from the statistical data published by the Central Statistical Office in Poland, and from the webpages of the analyzed organizations. The information on the NGOs as well as on the cultural institutions located in the rural areas of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voivodship has been compared. It turns out that the development of the NGOs in rural areas of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voivodship tends to have constant growth dynamics and that the presence of these organizations significantly increases the accessibility of cultural sector to residents and contributes to economic diversification. NGOs supporting the cultural sector have been developing only since 2000. Therefore, it can be assumed that the existing NGOs network is in its initial stage, but we may expect it will continue to develop. The NGOs are located mainly in urbanized and environmentally valuable areas. Considering the decreasing number of libraries and the types of initiatives undertaken by NGOs in the rural areas of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voivodship we should state that the emerging NGOs can remedy current deficiencies and provide rural residents with access to culture.

Self-government as representing the interests of the local population, social and political life organizing structure, occupies an important place in the political system of most of the countries. It is perceived as the lowest level of territorial division but as the closest one to civil society. Local self-government, in order to adapt to the changes, should focus on the investigation of the specific community issues, opportunities and needs of the development of the area. Currently, more and more relevant for district development stakeholders are becoming local authorities. The relevance of the topic is signified by the fact that the ever-changing environment provides people with new opportunities, but also causes a lot of problems. European district development policy provides new features for countryside areas, such as economic, social, environmental and territorial ones. The changes radically change the concept of local development and activities: from a centralized model of transition to exogenous and endogenous decentralized model, the latter based on local initiatives and resources, and innovations. The research objective is to single out theoretical possibilities for the application of the institutional dependency model in order to ensure the harmonious governance of Lithuanian local authorities. An assumption is made that this is a new opportunity for improving the governance process of territorial self-government. The research is based on the scientific literature, document analysis and synthesis, systematization, case studies, comparative analysis and visualization methods.

The municipalities of Latvia are different in terms of business development level. Latvia’s regions are grouped into clusters based on several indicators: number of economically active individual merchants and commercial companies per 1000 capita, territorial development index, and proportion of working-age population. In addition to the business indicators, the following tourism indicators were selected: number of recreational establishments, number of bedplaces, number of individual rooms, number of farms and individual merchants making use of culinary heritage. All these indicators are statistically significant for clustering municipalities. The clustering was performed by employing K-Means clustering and using the data processing programme SPSS. All Latvia’s municipalities were divided into four clusters based on the business development level and the level of exploitation of tourism infrastructure and culinary heritage. The analysis results enable conclusions to be made that a positive correlation exists between the business environment development level, and the level of use of tourism and culinary heritage. Culinary heritage is an important additional possibility for fostering business and economic growth in Latvia’s municipalities. A linear multifactor regression equation was obtained, which associated the revenues of the operating budget of a municipality with the following statistically significant factors: population density, territorial development index, expenditure on economic activity development, number of economically active entrepreneurs and commercial companies, number of tourism establishments, and number of enterprises dealing with culinary heritage. The analysis of regression equation coefficients points to the positive effects of all the factors included in the equation on the revenues of the basic budget of a municipality.

The positive place image attracts investors, foreign and national guests, creates the local residents’ pride and distinguishes it form the competing locations. Project activities are completed/or being carried out under the funding of the European Union and the Republic of Lithuania. The research problem: do project activities form positive place image? The research object – place image formation carrying out project activities. The purpose of the article – to analyze the implemented projects by Silale district Municipality and investigate their impact on the location image formation in Silale district. Research objectives are: (1) to identify and investigate the factors impacting the formation of Silale district Image; (2) to analyze and assess the project activities performed by Silale district Municipality. For the research completion the methods of questionnaire survey and content analysis were applied. The gained research outcome has disclosed that project activities in Silale district are focused to the restoration and beautifying of environment, but not on the investors, and there are not carried out any investment attraction projects. Two segments – local residents and tourists – received the benefit from the project activities in Silale district.

Land fragmentation is a problem for many post-communist countries. Different aspects of land fragmentation have been investigated by many researchers. However, there is little attention paid to the issues of internal fragmentation of agricultural parcels. In this study, internal fragmentation is understood as the following phenomenon: a parcel consists of different types of land plots or one land type (e.g. arable land) is split into separated plots. In this study the empirical test of internal fragmentation of arable land inside agricultural parcels has been made. The aim of the study was to examine the existence and extent of internal fragmentation of agricultural parcels. The digital map of boundaries of arable land parcels and data about land types (arable land, roads, etc.) from the Estonia National Topographic Database were the data sources of the study. The following characteristics were calculated in a GIS environment for agricultural parcels: compactness coefficient; number of pieces of arable land inside a parcel; Januszewski index for characterization of internal land fragmentation and the ratio (in percent) of arable land in a parcel. The results of the study show the existence of internal fragmentation of arable land inside agricultural parcels. Arable land is internally fragmented in about 30 percent of agricultural parcels. The area of the arable land plot inside parcels is 7.7 hectares if there is no internal fragmentation. In the case of internal fragmentation of the arable land, this area is 5.6 hectares respectively.

Great emphasis has been placed on agriculture by the European Union (EU), considering that agricultural production provides a framework for development of the processing industry and ensures food provision. Europe 2020 Strategy presents coordinated objectives of support for the rural development for the years 2014–2020. It has been emphasized that each Member State needs to set its national headline targets. Implementation of strategic provisions of the EU and Lithuania requires adequate identification of the priorities of agricultural scientific research and experimental development. It may significantly contribute to securing competitiveness, economic and social progress of the agricultural sector. The aim of the research was to prepare proposals for the Lithuanian Programme that sets the scientific research and experimental development priorities, long- and short-term research programmes for the period until 2020 in the view of demands of economy. Individual Working Groups (WG) have been formed of specialists of Lithuanian research and educational institutions as well as the advisory services. WG have proposed prospective applied research to develop within different areas of agriculture in 2014–2020. This served as the basis for the survey aimed at identifying a general demand for applied scientific research and potential problem areas in relation to agriculture, food economy and rural development that could be addressed by prospective applied scientific research. An anonymous survey was used across the country and summary results have been presented for two areas: crop management and agricultural engineering.

The demand for healthy and reasonably cheap food is growing and governments are expanding policies to preserve soil fertility and nature. In addition, climatic conditions are changing. Arable lands are decreasing. Due to all of these changes food growers are looking for new growing technologies. A monographic method to tackle these problems has been used in this article. Intercropping is one of growing systems how to reduce negative climatic aspects and meet other demands. Intercrop is convenient for growers who grow plants in rows, and a companion plant can be sown or planted between rows. In this case farmers can get two yields from one plot. Thus, growers do not need two plots for growing different plants. The intercrop diminishes spreading of pests and diseases, suppresses weed growth, and reduces need for pesticides. Legume (Leguminosae) intercrop gives extra nitrogen to companion plants. Those are aspects that we know intercrop can give, but we do not know how significant the influence is, what kind of influence on nature intercrops give in long term, what kind of influence they have on incomes, yield and its quality. This article shows that there are many intercropping systems to reduce some negative aspects and increase beneficial ones. Intercropping can reduce some pests and diseases, but promote other problems. Intercropping suppresses weeds. For some systems it gives bigger yield, for some smaller, but in total it gives bigger protein yield. There are still many unanswered questions and completely unexplained points.

Height at the centre of gravity is a part of mathematical model to interpret risk of lodging used for cereal crops. Because of the anatomical changes during vegetation period, several measured parameters in early milk stage (stem and panicle weight) will differ from over-ripe stage results in their values. The aim of this study was to define approximate values of calculated parameters describing oat (Avena sativa L.) height at the centre of gravity in early milk and over-ripe stages as well as determine connection with lodging risk. The trial was carried out at the State Stende Cereals Breeding Institute in 2013. There were 5 oat cultivars studied. At the investigated growing stages plant samples were taken from a field and in laboratory conditions stem/panicle weight and length measured. The height at the centre of gravity and gravity ratio were calculated using mathematical model by Berry (1998). Results showed that the value of the height at the centre of gravity in over-ripe stage was significantly higher (p is less than 0.01) than in early milk stage, but correlation with risk of lodging remained. Such lodging resistance describing mathematical model can be useful for oat as well as wheat cultivars.

The study consists of literature review on potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) initial seed material – minitubers production. This paper covers aspects of healthy potato microplants production techniques and subsequent greenhouse minitubers production methods. The diversity of conventional minituber growing techniques (on solid medium in greenhouses) is discussed. Review showed that obtained minitubers number depends on growing methods and variety. Physical manipulation during in vitro phase could have positive effects on minitubers yielding capacities.