December, 2021 – August, 2022, BGI Consulting carried out the Evaluation of the impact of 2014-2020 Lithuanian Rural Development Programme measures on enhancing farm viability and competitiveness of all types of agricultural activities and promoting innovative farm technologies. The Study was commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania.

 

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the contribution of measures that take part in the realization of the Lithuanian Rural Development Programme’s (RDP) 2^nd priority to the aim of increasing the vitality and competitiveness of agriculture and forestry sectors as well as promoting innovative farming technologies, and offer recommendations for effective and efficient EU support. In order to achieve this purpose, the main task of the study was implemented: to evaluate RDP’s influence in achieving the 2^nd priority’s goals. The scope of the study consisted of means that directly or indirectly contributed to the realization of RDP’s 2^nd priority and, accordingly, to the increase in farm vitality and competitiveness of all types of agricultural activities, as well as to promoting innovational farming technologies from 2014 to 2021.

 

Although the results of the study indicate that RDP’s 2^nd priority support successfully contributes to the improvement of the support beneficiaries’ competitiveness situation as well as reduces the gap between Lithuania’s agricultural competitiveness and that of the EU average, there are fields in Lithuanian agriculture that are falling considerably behind EU leading member states and the improvement of these fields would further encourage the convergence of competitiveness. To this day, the potential of cooperation in Lithuania is still not employed. This analysis showed that even though RDP’s 2^nd priority investments encouraged cooperation among beneficiary farms, the scope of this support was too limited to create a breakthrough on the whole level of the agricultural sector. Lithuanian farms continue to be some of the least cooperative farms in Europe. Significantly greater cooperation between farms, especially between small-scale farms, would allow for reduced costs of economic activity, contribute to the development of sustainability, and increase the share of added value in the agricultural product supply chain.

 

The administration of support system could also be improved. The analysis revealed signs of deadweight loss effect in the case of large-scale farm support. In response to this, it is suggested to evaluate the possibility of providing more investment support for large-scale farms in the form of soft loans. This way, fund recovery would be ensured, and the recovered funds could be distributed to greater support for small-scale and mid-scale farms.

 

The main qualitative and quantitative methods applied for the study are the analysis of strategic documents, secondary sources, semi-structured interviews, and quantitative questionnaire survey data analysis, performance analysis of the RDP program and its projects, counterfactual impact evaluation, micro-level data extrapolation analysis, and socio-economic indicator analysis.

 

The impact assessment results are available here. 

This Study is financed by the 2014-2020 Lithuanian Rural Development Programme’s technical assistance funds.