Service-Driven Farming: Keeping Quality of Life for Ageing Rural Community

Abstract

Early retirement from farming was proposed by many of the EU measures. The age structure in the EU currently demands a shift from such an outdated approach, and to focus on the highly-valued experiences of elderly people, which should be utilized by involving them in social and economic activities. Among the key challenges for rural development policy aiming to increase the quality of life of elderly, next to the traditional help and support measures, is the involvement of the elder generation in economic and social life. Therefore, the new EU agricultural policy measures should ensure that funding and institutional incentives support extending the working and active social life of the elderly farmers. One of the possible ways to change such an approach deals with servitization. The literature on servitization in manufacturing has been growing rapidly in the last decades, but only a few studies demonstrate how to apply a service-driven business model in agriculture. This paper aims to demonstrate a creative way to use a service-driven business model in farming and, at the same time, the ability of servitization projects to influence the vitality of rural communities by generating economic, social, and cultural effects. A case study on an innovative servitization initiative in rural areas of Lithuania “Rent a piece of garden” is used as a theory generating approach, which considers the needs of the elderly rural generation.