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Paper short abstract

This paper examines value assignment in a rural border space through a case study of cross-border farming in the Polish–Lithuanian borderland, where cooperation between Polish farmers and Lithuanian landowners mitigates historical and contemporary constraints.

Paper long abstract

In this presentation I want to reflect on a processes of value assignment in a rural border space. My findings are based on the research on the cross-border farming practices in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland I conducted between 2023 and 2025.

Rural space in the aforementioned borderland bears traces of land (de)valorisation by various historical and contemporary actors, such as: farmers, rural inhabitants, capitalistic and socialist states, and supranational entities. The state has viewed this area as both frontier and rural, subjecting it to securitization, peripheralisation, and rural policy change.

The Polish state maintained private ownership of land, but Lithuanian was affected by collectivization and, after 1990, by privatization of agricultural land. The result is still visible today as a profound difference in the condition of rural space, to the benefit of the Polish side of the border. European Union has viewed this area in the same categories – supporting the cross-border cooperation and distributing the subsidies to the farmers.

Polish farmers have assessed the same area as highly valuable due to land hunger and the demand for high-volume production in the capitalist agricultural market of contemporary Poland. Thus after 2008, when border became open Polish farmers and Lithuanian landowners began cooperating, engaging in cross-border farming practices. Polish farmers changed landscape of emptiness when they proposed their vision of utilising the (waste)lands to Lithuanian landowners (Dzenovska, Artiukh, Martin 2023). Tracking the development of these practices tells a story of rural inhabitants actively making use of others’ valuations to support their livelihoods.