Declining rural population increases distances to public services, they become more expensive. Therefore, provision of public services is a growing challenge in rural areas not only in Lithuania but also in Europe. Public services are one of the aspects of rural vitality, which is widely debated by both scientists and politicians. Demand aspects are debated, new, innovative ways of provision of public services discussed, new service models combining private, public sectors and community resources are sought. The aim of the study was to identify public services, the demand for which is the greatest in rural areas. To achieve the aim, the questionnaire for elders of Lithuanian rural wards was prepared. The questionnaires were sent to all Lithuanian rural wards – 450 and 352 elders’ answers were received. The results showed that the best served are public services as information accessibility, school-age children education and social services. The public services where a lot of changes must be done are such as primary health care and all types of utilities (water, sewerage, waste), public transport.

The agriculture could be characterized as the economic activity which production and economic results are unpredictable and unstable because of climate change, market volatility. Vast and growing risk of farming induces to look after the ways to manage it. European Union, aiming to reduce risks in agricultural activities, proposes to create mutual funds as new measures for farmers not only to protect the production, but the income losses too. Lithuania intends to implement these measures, therefore it is very important not only to analyse the experience of other countries but also to know the opinion of Lithuanian farmers' community. The aim of the research is to examine the attitudes of Lithuanian farmers due to participation in creation of mutual funds. Using the method of force field the semi structured questionnaire was developed, it was sent to 46 leaders of farmer's organizations affiliated to The Chamber of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania, 22 replies were received. The research results confirmed farmers' attitudes, that the risk management tools, associated with creation of mutual funds are necessary and relevant in Lithuanian case, but their current level of awareness impels uncertainty and unpreparedness.

Crisis of recent decade had proved many times the interconnectivity and interdependency among all actors, sectors and areas of concern throughout the globalized value chains. Today sustainable development strategies are under reconstruction by global governance bodies together with stakeholders from around the world, concerning the main issue of durable future. Agriculture as main provider of public goods, recently had experienced pressure from public society and entered the debates for an essential review of the underlying support principles, based on multifunctionality, which hardly meet the goals of sustainable development. Recently some evidence appeared that the gap between multifunctionality and sustainability might be closed with help of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The paper aims to disclose the challenges and incentives which accelerated the origination of CSR concept and related discussions in an agrarian discourse through the provision of public goods. Systemic analysis and synthesis of theoretical insights of foreign and local scientific literature and the methods of induction and deduction were applied to investigate the theoretical aspect and characteristics of CSR and public goods in agrarian discourse. Theoretical research results propose that the concept of CSR does provide a basis for further analysis and discussion concerning the role of agriculture as a subject of government support from a broader systems perspective, which means a shift in paradigms, emphasized by movement from the sectoral policy and agricultural support to a more inclusive place-based development.

After joining EU Lithuania started to receive the support for modernization of agricultural production processes, to maintain farmers' income, upgrade rural infrastructure, improve people's quality of life. Farmers, the local authorities, as well as rural communities had to absorb EU support administration procedures, what formed a new culture of communication. That is why it is important to analyze what was the EU support impact on rural residents, especially their social capital, which is one of the sources to improve life quality and well-being. The purpose of this article is to assess the impact of EU support on rural residents’ social capital. To achieve the set goal Lithuanian rural wards’ elders were selected as representatives of the local authorities. Survey results showed that the rural communities residents became more motivated, self-reliant, the number of cultural and other events increased, the residents began to build their leisure. And pay more attention and resources for the maintenance of living environment and rural landscape.

Rural vitality is an important public good which is needed to be constantly maintained by appropriate rural policy decisions and which is supported by a number of factors, one of which is infrastructure and services provided. This article covers only one of the elements of the infrastructure - transportation infrastructure – which provides movement services to people in space (public, individual transport, its availability, roads density, quality, etc.). The paper aimed to establish the relationship between the region's vitality and communication infrastructure elements and their trends The study was carried out for three groups of Lithuanian municipalities in which they have been divided by internal migration rate: viable (lowest emigration), non-viable (maximum) and mid-viable. The results showed that while non-viable regions are fading more rapidly (faster population decline and aging) than viable, it's transportation infrastructure are scrambling to maintain at a level that the regional aging population suffer the least possible inconvenience.

After joining EU Lithuania for more than a decade is receiving support for agricultural production modernization, maintaining farmers' income, for upgrading rural areas, for improving quality of life of rural population. Support coming for municipalities from RDP 2007-2013 measures implementation differs very much and it could be supposed that the impact of the support had to be different. The aim of the study was to assess the impact of the implementation of RDP 2007-2013 program measures for Lithuanian rural regions. For the investigation purposes Lithuanian municipalities were divided into three groups according to received support per 1 ha of agricultural land: the biggest, medium and least. According to the chosen system of indicators describing the rural areas as a whole, it has been studied the impact of support demographic situation, economic, social and natural environments. Average data of two periods: 2004-2008 without the support were compared to the average data of the period of 2009-2015 when the support has already been obtained. The investigation showed that the municipal group that received the highest support, compared with the other two municipal groups demonstrated better results: the net emigration and depopulation trend slowed, a significant increase in capital investment in agriculture, forestry and fisheries is observed, the overall area declared and the area per one application is stated. Differences in number of operating SMEs and the share of employed out of the working-age people were not as great to compare with other two municipality group indicator's values.

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The concept of rural vitality often used to describe the rural areas as specific areas that are of particular significance not only for the region but also the country as a whole. Depending on the objectives investigated there are different indicators used to evaluate the vitality – one of them – rural residents social portrait. Purpose of the research is to identify the impact of changes of social portrait of rural residents on rural vitality. In this study, the indicators of general censuses of 2001 and 2011 were used to assess the social portrait of rural residents. The results showed that changes of social portrait of rural residents had both positive and negative trends on rural vitality. As positive trends should be mentioned rising higher grade educated, multilingual population, a rapidly improving life and living conditions in the rural areas compared with the townspeople. The trends adversely affected the vitality of rural areas are: depopulation, the growing share of elderly in the structure of the rural population, declining rural population’s entrepreneurship, decline of number of income sources and continued growth in the share of persons living of wage labor.