IFAJ 45th Annual Congress 8-13
September 2001, Savonlinna, Finland
Northers
Dimension and Family Farming
Sisko
Mäkelä
Dairy
Farmer
Until the
mid-1990s, Finnish agriculture existed within a sheltered economy. We could
make an agreement with the government on the prices of products, the amounts we
required in our domestic consumption and the laws to regulate production.
However, when we joined the EU against farmer opinion, we had to adapt to a
very different situation. This was a sudden, very dramatic change, which proved
too much to bear for many farm families, causing especially small farms to quit
production altogether. The number of operating farms has decreased from 105,570
in 1994 to 75,000 today, while the average size of farms has increased: the average
plot size of Finnish farms is now 28 hectares, compared to 22 hectares in 1995
and 17 in 1990.
The reason
for these changes was the dramatic decline in produce prices, which forces the
farm family to increase the size of their farm enterprise or look for
alternative sources of income. This poses a threat to the Finnish way of family
farming, the likes of which is not found in any other country. Finnish
agriculture is based on family farms: in 2000 private persons owned 88% of all
farms in Finland. If two spouses are working on the farm, they are
automatically assumed to be business partners and co-owners of the farm,
usually with each holding 50% of the operation.
Finnish farmers divide the farm income based on the share of farm work. This also affects social security, because taxable income, social security and qualifications are consistent with each other. This is perhaps one aspect of the Northern Dimension, typical of one third of the active dairy farms. The change in the number of dairy farms has been drastic: previously, almost all farms in Finland produced milk, but by 2000 there were only 21,500 farms practising any form of dairy farming compared to 40,000 in 1991.
These
phenomena are connected with the emigration from rural areas. When agriculture
forces farmers out of business, there are no job substitutes available. This
can prove disastrous to the basic infrastructure in a large country with a low
population density.
One typical
feature in all Scandinavian countries is that women leave rural areas on
average more than men. This happens because men usually take care of the farms,
while women look for other types of jobs. The rural women are usually more
highly educated than rural men.
New
strategies
In this new
situation we were forced to weigh very carefully the strengths and weaknesses
of our production. We must be able to live with three major problems: 1. our
cold climate; 2. small farm size; and 3. long distances from consumption
centres. Our climate with its short growing season and long, cold winter results in extremely high production costs,
which compromises our ability to compete with farmers in more southern climes.
This means: maintaining heated buildings to keep our animals warm in the middle
of the winter cold; maintaining large storage facilities to keep forage for 8-9
months at a time; keeping livestock in barns; maintaining expensive machinery
to grow and harvest all that forage within a three-month period. Furthermore,
we cannot use seed crops with high yields, such as corn or alfalfa.
The reason
for the small size of our farms is partly rooted in our history, but also from
our climatic restrictions. Thirdly, we are located far from population centres
and, in turn, markets. Every now and then revolutionary new farm products are
introduced, but if the closest town is over 100 kilometres away, and the major
European markets are over 1000 kilometres away, these will be of little use;
such isolated farms require courage and skill to bring their crops to market.
On the other hand, this distance from major markets can also be considered one
of our strengths, providing us with a natural shelter for domestic food
production. We are not a very attractive market to big multinational food
companies.
If we use
the weaknesses of our agriculture to our advantage, these weaknesses can be
transformed into our key strengths. Our distance from almost all major
population centres and the cold climate actually represent our greatest
strengths. Our plants are less likely to be affected by pests or plant
diseases, which translates into the reduced need for pesticides and plant
protection. Finland’s vast surface area, low population density, lack of
traffic and low-impact industrial infrastructure mean clean air and low nitrate
and heavy metal content in our soil. These factors are very beneficial to the
production of wholesome food.
Our remote
location has helped us to maintain the health of our livestock like nowhere
else in the world. Finland has been declared ‘disease free’ by the World Organisation
for Animal Health (OIE) in regards to several animal diseases. The EU
Scientific Council has classified Finland, together with Sweden and Austria, as
low BSE risk countries. The small size of the farms allows more individualised
care of the livestock and provides us with a greater possibility to prevent the
outbreak of diseases. The aim of our animal husbandry is healthy livestock, not
productivity at any cost. We do not enhance the production capacity of our
animals with hormones or antibiotics, methods that our consumers do not accept.
But Finnish
food safety is not just blind luck. It is also the result of years of hard
work. An essential aspect of this work are official regulations, which start
from feed control and go through the entire food chain to the supermarket
shelf. For the farmer, this means a lot of paperwork and a lot of time spent in
conference with agricultural administrators, advisors, veterinarians, etc. But
this is the only way to ensure the consumer that our food is pure.
Food safety and food quality are thus
our main strategies to survive as food producers. Of course food quality is an
expression that means different things to different persons. This is why the
only way to market our food is to have an active dialogue with our clients, the
consumers and their organisations. Farmers and every part of the food
production chain works under the policy that the Finnish consumer can place his
trust in the safety of the food he is eating. The Finnish farmer supports a
fully transparent food production chain, in which each link guarantees the
consumer the quality and safety of its own operations. This new dialogue
between producers and consumers arose after EU membership, and people began
buying domestic products as a matter of preference.
Quality
assurance system in agriculture
The
national food quality strategy was completed in 1998, following extensive
preparation of industrial inputs for agriculture, farmers, the foodstuffs
industry, wholesalers, consumers, research, advisory boards, the official
sector and administration. The ambitious target is that a transparent quality
chain will extend from production investments made on the farm to the consumer
via industry and grocers by no later than 2006 in all production sectors. This
work is based on the fact that the needs and hopes of the consumer dictate the
function of the entire chain. The aim is to improve food quality and maintain
its high standard.
Currently,
farms are developing a quality assurance system, in which all work and procedures
performed on the farm are recorded in a quality logbook. This quality assurance
system helps us to minimise risk factors and makes it easier to trace actions
taken.
Sisko Mäkelä
Dairy farmer
M.Sc. (Agr.For.)
Age: 45 years
Ms. Mäkelä has been a dairy farmer since 1984
on her home farm in Northern Ostrobothnia, Middle Finland. Following a divorce,
she bought the farm for herself in 1997. She has two children: an 18-year-old
son and a 16-year-old daughter.
Ms. Mäkelä’s farm has a field area of 31 hectares,
all growing hay (pastures and silage); a forest area of 80 hectares; a share of
co-operative forest; 18 dairy cows; and 20 young cows.
Ms. Mäkelä holds different posts in
agricultural organisations and companies closely related to agriculture. She is
Vice President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)
Women's Committee.