Problem addressed

For more than 20 years Land Source of Income Foundation/LSIF/ strives to support income generation initiatives of financially disadvantaged families mainly in the rural areas of Bulgaria by developing its Land Program and applying the Integrated Model for Entrepreneurship Support. In that way our team contributes to a more inclusive market economy in Bulgaria. 

We share the understanding of the Rockefeller Foundation that Inclusive Economies have 5 inter-related characteristics: participation, equity, growth, sustainability, and stability. We also think that communities should play crucial role in this process. 

The LSIF team believes that inclusive market economy opens real opportunities for more broadly shared prosperity especially for those facing the greatest barriers to advancing their well-being.

Innovative solution

Farm4us.eu platform allows us to offer distant interactive specialized consultancy needed. It reduces costs and increase the number of people being served. All agricultural producers interested have access to it for specialized information (technological maps, business plans, information for RDP etc.).  The platform provides agrometeorological information from the specially installed station in Perushtiza. This information is of help not just to our beneficiaries, but also to many other agricultural produces in the area. Installed in the secondary Vocational school it also serves the training process and allows students to be acquainted with the benefits of digitalization. ( http://farm4us.eu/)

Key results and benefits

By the end of 2025, the project supports 204 families in rural areas in Plovdiv region. It provides income to 667 people, out of which 374 are members of the supported families and 297 part-time workers (non family members). They cultivate 2247 dca land in total. For the period 2024-2025 the project has supported 35 business initiatives with the total amount of BGN 33 492. We have also helped the families in the program to get accesses to BGN 352 917 from EU direct payments schemes. 

During our work on the Land Source of Income Program, we began asking ourselves to what extent the program has changed the lives of the families we support. Visually, their standard of living has improved, but it is difficult to determine how much of this improvement is due to the overall economic development in Bulgaria and how much can be attributed to our intervention.

We found that impact evaluation is a difficult and challenging task. The Theory of Change framework is often recommended as an approach to evaluating impact. However, in practice, its application is frequently limited to comparing planned and achieved levels of predefined indicators. While such comparisons can demonstrate progress, they do not necessarily show whether the observed changes were caused by the program itself or by external factors. 

In 2023 we publish an article, where attempt was made to evaluated the impact of Land program. Before publishing we discussed the issue with colleagues from Economics department of Agricultural University-Plovdiv; Entrepreneurialship centre at the Technical University -Sofia Branch Plovdiv; Institute of Agricultural Economics-Sofia. 

Ivan Penov  (2023).  The role of small-scale farming for local economic development and family incomes: The case of Land-Source of Income program, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.  Bulgarian Journal of Agricultural Science, 29 (Suppl. 1) 2023 Agricultural Academy ISSN 1310-0351 (Print) ISSN 2534-983X (On-line) https://journal.agrojournal.org/page/en/details.php?article_id=4484&tab…

Potential for mainstreaming

The land program has been transferred to 5 independent NGO in different parts of Bulgaria. Through a project funded by TSA we continue to scale it up.