According to provisional data, as of 1 June 2003, there were 279 thous. farms producing agricultural products (further – farms), whose land property consisted of one hectare of agricultural land or more, or whose agricultural land though being less than one hectare, gave income from agricultural products sales no less than forty minimum standards of living. Those farms had 2939 thous. ha land, of which 2542 thous. ha were agricultural land. On the average one farm had 10.6 ha of land, of which 9.1 were agricultural land. The average size of the farm in Lithuania is equal of a half average size of the farm in the EU as well as it is equal of the average farm size in Portugal. Some economic and social indices. The strategical plans of agriculture forecast two trends of farms development: specialized competitive farms, producing traditional products and supplying them to processing and trading companies; farms engaged in untraditional activity and producing ecological products, which realize their produce in market niches. Smaller cooperative farms will develop along with the large commodity production farms. The period of demographic transition ended in the 70ties when stabilization of demographic processes set in. Since 1989 till 2005 the rural population had reduced from 1188.0 to 1145.2 thou, i.e., only by 3.6. These were the lowest rates of rural population reduction in the second half of the 20th century. The recent stabilization of rural population is predetermined... [to full text]