Skógræktarritið - 15.05.2001, Side 127

Various niche-markets have
emerged at the local level. These
markets are usually too small to
be economically interesting on
the national level. Values might
f.ex. acknowledging some special
physical quality of the wood
when used in a special context,
but often they are based more on
subjective opinion (local identifi-
cation).
„Other" forest functions are
being promoted. Environmental
organisations have played a role
in increased focus on the non-
timber values of forests: beauty,
scenery, recreation, biodiversity
and sustainability, as well as
other functions concerning pos-
sible usage of forest area for
commercial activities, tourism,
berry picking, mushrooms, etc.
Looking at the economic
dimension, job structures have
become "urbanized"; from self-
employment to wage earning and
from pluriactivity to monoactivi-
ty. Rural communities were for-
merly dominated by various
occupations in the primary sec-
tor such as agriculture, fisheries,
forestry etc. Today, wage-earning
economy dominates in rural
societies, both in the former pri-
mary sector, where in farmers
have become more or less gov-
ernmental employees through
various subsidies and grant
schemes, but especially through
the emergence of the welfare
state with its multitude of occu-
pations in public administration
such as education, health care
etc. This also calls for a range of
services such as janitors, garden-
ers, cleaners etc. resulting in job
opportunities formerly non-exis-
tent in rural areas. And, offering
good wages and regular hours,
this is often considered more
attractive than the insecurity of
being self employed. The self-
employed often had to rely on
several jobs to make a living.
Also, being tied up in farm-pro-
duction meant that full-time
occupation off-farm was impossi-
ble. The change from self-
employment to wage-earning has
thus been followed by a decrease
in pluriactivity.
There has also been a general
tendency towards agglomera-
tions. This has been mentioned
above regarding forestry, but it
has been just as obvious in other
sectors of production and in pub-
lic administration. Furthermore,
local ownership in many cases
has been transformed to a more
„professional" ownership by
entering the stock-market and
thus lessening the degree of
local control and responsibility.
Regarding the rural popula-
tion, the trend has generally
been that there is an out-migra-
tion of the young people, result-
ing in an ageing rural society
with a skewed gender-mix. Also,
women entering the workforce
has resulted in new household
patterns.
This has resulted in some
important changes in social
structures. In households, the
traditional great-families com-
prising several generations have
changed via the core-family to
the modern single-family often
with less then two persons on
average. Greater equality and
new roles for women have result-
ed in new roles for men: from
being master of his own time to
being a part of the family-activi-
ties („i/I fiave to choose between work-
ing in the foresl on a Saturday or dri-
ving my kids to the swimming-pool, I
normally chose driving the kids.“)
Society also poses new chal-
lenges. Participation in civic soci-
ety is emerging and embraced by
public authorities as well as local
communities themselves (cynic
view: get cheap labour to do pub-
lic work, altruistic view: increase
social sustainability)
Findings about forest owners
From our study, and from what
we have seen in developed coun-
tries around the world, it is pos-
sible to draw up some character-
istics of forest owners and their
households.
The normal situation is to be a
small-scale non-industrial pri-
vate forest owner. The average
productive forest area in western
Norway was below 30 ha and in
most European countries the
average is far smaller. It is likely
that the median size is far lower
than the average, due to the fact
that few very large holdings raise
the average. Small holdings
make continuous activity (self-
activity) difficult, be it commer-
cial or non-commercial.
He (the typical owner is a
male), is in his late fifties, his
children have left home and are
living in the cities. They have
jobs (typically low unemploy-
ment), and in many countries
(such as Norway), the regulation
of property transfer is in many
ways a hindrance for the young
generation to take over (costs,
legal conditions concerning resi-
dential and production issues,
especially in situations where
forest is connected to a farm). As
mentioned earlier, the general
rule seems to be that it will be
the sibling with the least weighty
arguments not to take over who
ends up with the farm/forest.
In Norway we found the owner
typically to be married, with the
spouse working off-farm almost
at the same rate as women on
average. Thus, forest income as
part of the total household
income is normally in third place
or lower, typically close to zero%,
with only a very few (10 %) of the
most active farms earning as
much as 20% of the household
income from forestry. The total
income from farming is also rela-
tively low compared to income
SKÓGRÆKTARRITIÐ 2001 1. tbl
125