Farms of northern Finland

Abstract

This paper studies the structural development of farms with more than one hectare of arable land in northern Finland and explores the reasons behind the development. The paper relies mainly on agricultural census information and farm register statistics, focusing on the period after World War II.

Agricultural settlement expanded in northern Finland well into the mid- 1960s due to active policy measures. The period of extensive rural population was short-lived, however. A number of unfavourable factors emerged roughly simultaneously and the number of active farms declined from nearly 60,000 in the 1960s to about 10,000 in 2000. Finland’s entry into the EU in the mid-1990s gave further impetus to the development toward fewer but larger farms.

Today, active farms are several times as large as their predecessors 40–50 years ago. About 50 percent of all active farms in northern Finland are dairy farms, whose impact is considerably larger than their mere number would suggest.