Lithuania

The Living Lab

Lithuania covers an area of 65 000 square kilometres, of which 85% is rural territory. The country is primarily characterised by its rural landscape, with approximately one-third of the population living in rural areas. Located within a rural region affected by depopulation stemming from internal and external migration, this Living Lab addresses the consequences of historically intensive agricultural practices that have led to soil degradation and negative environmental impacts. Women in Lithuania cultivate small plots of land and haven’t participated in the previous large-scale and harmful farming methods on their small-sized farms. There is potential for women farmers to be socio-ecological leaders and innovators in adopting greening measures. Moreover, their influence extends beyond agriculture as rural women actively cultivate the social capital and optimise community activities that signify their role in regional development. This Living Lab seeks to explore the innovation requirements of women managing small farms and rural women developing initiatives to strengthen the social capital in rural areas.

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Meet our women innovators

Lina Vyšniauskaitė

Food farmer

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Lina Vyšniauskaitė
Food farmer

Lina Vyšniauskaitė holds a university degree in Lithuanian language and used to live abroad prior to starting a farm. She has been farming for more than 15 years. Her farm focuses on cereal farming and covers the area of 120 ha. She is mostly responsible for accounting and marketing. The innovative activities on the farm are not well developed yet, but she has introduced oil production which contributes to the diversification of activities. She started producing oils to serve friends and due to her natural interest in novel technologies/activities. She is also willing to spread organic farming and educate society.

Daiva Šinkevičienė

Food farmer

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Daiva Šinkevičienė
Food farmer

Daiva Šinkevičienė has higher university education qualification, graduated from Vilnius University, Lithuania, specialisation in economics. She has been running an organic blueberry farm for the past 10 years. She was the first to plant blueberries in Kaunas region, Gaizenai village. Daiva carefully monitors the cultivation of the berries and tries to find out what is the most suitable or not for the cultivation of blueberries in Lithuania. She has 14 varieties of berries over 4 hectares. Furthermore, she is working to discover and produce innovative processed products (such as wine) from the blueberries. Daiva’s sustainable farm uses solar renewable energy and the latest innovative drone mapping technology for plant care analysis. The products of my sustainable farm are sold to short food supply chains.

Justė Jankauskienė

Food farmer

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Justė Jankauskienė
Food farmer

Justė Jankauskienė has been studying environmental design for a few years. She had been living outside of Lithuania and decided to embark on farming after coming back home. She has been farming for the second season now. Her farm focuses on bee keeping and shiitake mushroom production. The farm area is 3 ha.
Currently there are no innovations implemented on her farm but in the near future she would like to diversify her activities, i.e. hosting educational events for school children and elderly people and making beeswax products (candles, ointments, and lip balms). Justė thinks that agricultural activities and innovations are important as an example of entrepreneurship for her children.

Justina Kočetova

Fish farmer

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Justina Kočetova
Fish farmer

Justina Kočetova has a university degree from Kaunas University of Technology, specialising in technical language translation and editing. Justina’s parents were farmers and cultivated crops, cereals and sugar beet. Justina then took over the farm which she has now owned for 12 years. Before taking over her parents’ farm, she and her brother set up an aquaculture farm with catfish. Now the farm is more focused on processing products. In the centre of the district where she lives, she has opened her own shop to sell her produce. To attract the culinary tourists, she has developed an innovative product – cucumber jam, as the region where Justina lives has a long tradition of cucumber growing.

Eglė Valuckaitė-Stašauskienė

Food farmer

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Eglė Valuckaitė-Stašauskienė
Food farmer

Winner of the ‘Created in Kėdainiai district’ Award


Eglė Valuckaitė-Stašauskienė has a higher education, with a degree in philology. She has been farming for 1 year and runs a very small farm on a 50-acre plot of land: without fertilisers or chemicals. She grows vegetables (more than 100 varieties of tomatoes, 26 varieties of basil, 18 varieties of peppers, aubergines and a variety of spices), berries and almost 400 peony bushes. Some of the produce is sold fresh in the form of vegetable baskets, and what is not sold is processed. The vegetables and berries are processed into condiments, sauces, salts, spices, soup mixes and various vinegars. In this way, a unique product is created. This year she and her family have created around 70 different types of product.

Rasa Prusakova

Food farmer

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Rasa Prusakova
Food farmer

Winner of the Future Rural Creators Award


Rasa Prusakova holds a university degree in energy engineering. She has been living in the rural area for 10 years and farming for 4 years. Her farm focuses on organic vegetables, beef cattle, and egg production. The farm area is 20 ha. Due to the background of her husband, they are interested in engineering innovations to reduce labour input. These include a seedling greenhouse with automatic equipment. She would like to install an automatic weeding system. 

Rūta Aliukonienė

Dairy farmer

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Rūta Aliukonienė
Dairy farmer

Rūta Aliukonienė holds a university degree from Kaunas University of Technology, specialising in financial management. She has lived her entire life in the countryside and has been close to rural/farm work since childhood. She keeps cows of the Jersey breed, which is not a common breed in Lithuania. It is a small farm. Their milk is used to make products which are sold directly to consumers at the farmers’ market. She has been farming for 23 years.

Ina Grecka

Food farmer

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Ina Grecka
Food farmer

Ina Grecka holds a university degree in civil engineering and a college degree in agronomy. She has been farming and living in the rural area for 3 years. Her farm focuses on grapes, blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, and shiitake mushroom cultivation. It covers an area of 5 ha. She has been introducing a vineyard and sees that being located near the capital city provides for more opportunities to embark on educational activities on the farm. She is interested in adopting the experience from foreign countries and increasing the awareness of wine culture. Ina would also like to exploit the attractive location of the farm.