Abstract

The ownership and management of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) can be considered as rooted in a farm forestry tradition. However, during the last decades, general trends in society such as urbanisation, mechanisation, equality between men and women, an increasing awareness on environmental issues etc., have changed the conditions. In this paper, some major structural changes and management trends, based on questionnaire surveys in 1973/74, 1983/84 and 1996/97, are outlined and discussed. Differences between some major categories of forest owners, in terns of activity and attitudes, are also presented. • The number of forest owners have increased considerably (40%), mainly in terms of co-ownership • One third of all forest owners, own their property together with relatives living in separate households • Somewhat less than 50 percent of the forest owners are residents on their forest farm • Resident NIPF owners indicate harvesting and silviculture activities to a higher extent than non-resident NIPF owners • The share of properties with self-employment in cutting activities has increased, although we have experienced continuously decreasing volumes of timber, cut and delivered by self-employed forest owners to wood processing industries. Generally speaking, the forest owner has become less of a ”forest worker” and more of a forest manager. • Forest owners with medium size properties (50 - 399 ha), representing 31% of all NIPF owners, have a more ”traditional profile” than owners with small size or large size properties. They do more often live on the property, are more often self-employed in forestry work, combine forestry and agriculture more often, and are to a larger extent members of a forest owner association • Most forest owners consider the benefit of forest income less important than the benefit from recreation/outdoor life and wood for their own use (firewood, construction wood). Consequently, our concepts of NIPF owners, their forest management practices including self-employment, as well as how we conduct studies on those phenomena, has to be reconsidered. We suggest that 1) more attention should be paid to the forest owner as an individual, and as a decision-maker 2) self-employment in non-industrial private forestry should include administration, planning, and follow-up of forestry operations done by contractors

Published in

Conference

Joint FAO/ECE/ILO Committee on Forest technology, Management and Training Workshop on Forest Operation Improvments in Farm Forestry

SLU Authors

• Lidestav, Gun

  • Department of Silviculture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics and Business
Forest Science
Social Sciences


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/1404