Business start-up support for young farmers

Justina grew up on her family’s farm in the Ukmergė region of central Lithuania and she wanted to continue in her family’s footsteps by becoming a young farmer. Initially, she had access to land and some older equipment. However, being an ambitious young person with a lot of ideas and aspirations for her business, she wanted to invest in modern machinery that could better help her to fulfil her business plans. The main objective of this project was to provide Justina with enough working capital to establish a viable farming business. She also planned to use the start-up funding as a way of helping her to demonstrate the profitability of her business. This could then help her secure further RDP funding for additional equipment from the RDP measure ‘supporting the modernisation of farm holdings’. Justina used her start-up funding from the RDP to contribute to the costs of purchasing new equipment for growing arable crops - including a mechanical sower, hydraulic cutter, equipment for spraying fertiliser, and machinery for grinding seeds.