When discussing the clearance projects, the farmers frequently presented various kinds of land deal that besides the clearings included land exchanges and purchases, as well as lease agreements. Because such land deals are mentioned together with clearings, I have concluded that they are related. I came to view clearance as just one of the measures applied on farms in order to reshape not only single fields, but also the whole domain such that farming is made easier and/or the farm can be expanded.
These measures can be seen to be part of domain management, by which the farmers pursue the objective of ‘moving’ arable land closer to the farmstead in order to ‘place’ it at an accessible distance and to gather the land they manage into continuous stretches that can be tilled as ‘a single piece’. Domain management is about reorganizing the farm domain. The background to domain management is obviously the existence of the farm in a variously constrained neighbourhood situation, where access to more land is not a straightforward matter (as it would be if it could follow, for example, a principle of concentric growth). Farm neighbourhoods simply do contain other farms; openings in the space of the neighbourhood that access to land represents show up irregularly and at varying distances.
It seems that such separate land deals follow an overarching goal. I bring up this issue, as it appears that it has not been discussed in previous research, even though the primary focus in my project has been on forest clearance on the clearance farms. Domain management being an overarching strategy, it in fact makes a case of the Hägerstrandian call to retain the landscape totality intact, as discussed in Part A (see chapter A1, p. 19). The cases studied here indicate that
various types of land deal should be considered together from the point of view of farming practice. I call below the various land deals
‘moves’ and include examples of such moves from two farms. The selection of the two examples presented in this chapter depended on availability of material documenting a collection of such moves.
The two examples presented in detail derive, firstly, from a large-scale agricultural enterprise (farm CF 10), and secondly, from a farm on which such moves are part of a withdrawal from engagement in agriculture (due not to retirement but to non-farming employment, farm CF 7).
While the first example shares aspects with other interviewees’ reports concerning spatial
‘problems’ regarding access to land97, the second example represents as I suggest in understanding a case of domain management being enacted above all in pursuit of time-economic gains.
The first example (Fig. 51) comprises a land purchase in 2010/11 including arable land, and a land exchange. By these moves, the farmer gained a large rectangular cropping space (60 ha) and more land close to the farmstead. To begin in the south on the map, two adjacent parcels to the left of the road were included in a land purchase together with three other parcels (marked ‘2010/11’). To the right of the road lies a field that was ‘lost’ in the land exchange (marked ‘land exchange’). Further upwards on the same side of the road, the large cropping space is depicted, including owned (grey) and leased land (light grey) and the two clearings of 5 ha and 11 ha, respectively (dark grey).
97 Especially farms CF 4, CF 2, CF 1, also CF 5.
Figure 51, previous page! Domain Management I, Farm Land Map Farm CF 10
Note: The farm domain has two additional parcels (9 ha), lying outside the area depicted, and left out of the map because their location was not available on the occasion of the interview.
The cleared land was gained by the land exchange that preceded the clearing (this piece of land is larger than the field lost in the exchange, which compensated for it being swampy, thus non-productive. forest land). All of the land here consists of peat land, with highly productive organic soils. The transactions made create, as the farmer stresses, a ‘large piece’. Furthermore, land deals nearer to the farmstead (encircled) place more land under management nearby (this is not a dairy farm, but a farm with cereals and vegetables only, thus there are no cows needing grazing land near the cowhouse). South of the farmstead lies one of the recently purchased fields, but also a forest stand (owned) with stony soil and a small parcel separated by roads on two sides and additional owned forest on the third side. The farmer reasoned that the smaller parcel would probably be afforested within five years. It is close to the farmstead, so this consideration is more about the small size and the impractical shape of the parcel and the surrounding situation that does not allow for improvements, as there are roads and land owned by others around it, in addition to the forest, which is not ideal for clearing. To the west of the farmstead, finally, lies one more recently purchased parcel, and forested areas (green dashed polygons) which the farmer thinks he might clear someday, partially or wholly. This farmer put much stress on the insecurity of informal management agreements, finding them problematic because “if you want to expand, you have to have control over the land, you can't count on lease agreements and the like in the long term, that’s too insecure” (farmer interview).
In the clearance farm cases studied, one recurring topic has been that relying on non-formalized
lease agreements is insecure, while this line of reasoning I did not hear when visiting land use farms.
While the farmer in this farm example is expanding his arable production, hoping for increased yields from the good soil on the cleared land when the clearing will be completed, the second farm example of domain management demonstrates a farmer carrying out similar moves in order to withdraw from farming as a livelihood (farm CF 7). As in the previous example, land exchange and clearance are combined to produce a large continuous parcel without partitions (32 ha, Fig. 52). This new, larger cropping space lies in part on owned (22 ha), in part on long-term-leased land near the farmstead. The owned land excluding the land exchange had long belonged to the farm estate, although part of it was forested: the present farmer's grandfather started by clearing half an acre down by the road in the 1930s (dashed stretch of land, see map). The clearance project initiated by the grandfather, continued by the father, had recently been resumed by the farmer (red, see map). For him there had been 4 ha of forest still to clear; two plots doable for one man during one winter had been accomplished, and a third – only a small strip of trees (Figs. 52, 54) – was projected as a task for the upcoming winter.
Directly adjacent lies a field (marked by a single star) that was gained in exchange for a machinery shed and a part of an arable parcel.
This exchange merits more detail, as the land given away is located adjacent to the machinery shed and was cut off from a field of which ownership has been retained. The cutting-off is indicated by a single star on the map (near the farmstead on the other side of the road) and produced a ‘new’ parcel with ‘straighter lines’: “I thought that was a good deal”, the farmer maintains.
Figure 52. Domain Management II, Farm Land Map Farm CF 7
Figure 53. Clearing and Plans for Domain Management, Farm CF 4
Background orthophoto: Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority (Use Agreement i2012/927 Lund University).
Thus several changes were effected in the same two to three-year period: arable land including a previous clearing was sold off (double stars on the map, marked as owned land and clearance project); the land−machinery shed exchange deal was made; and a long-term lease agreement running since the father’s times (27 ha) was relinquished (Fig. 52, ‘previous lease’). The lease agreement had become unsatisfactory due to recurring annual rent increases, the rather poor soils, and constraining parcel subdivisions – “you couldn't cultivate it in one piece” (farmer interview). While this farmer is not expanding, several farmers in his immediate neighbourhood are doing so, and they are clearing land for arable use. This situation might go towards explaining the rent increases for the lease. I would characterize this farmer as an ‘active’ farmer: he actively engages with the land, albeit with the somewhat paradoxical objective of decreased engagement. He carries out domain management along the same principles as farms expanding their production and their domains – i.e. he rationalizes, which it is important to note.
Not only large-scale expanding businesses are keen on rationalisation. Rather, the farm example above with the domain-management measures being undertaken points up the importance of time-economy in farming overall.
This farmer emphasises the fact that a large continuous piece of arable land will be obtained (a rationalizing move), while at the same time telling that he “has neither the strength nor the time” (farmer interview) – a man in his fifties − for a deeper involvement in farming than his current level. (It can be noted here that previously, the agricultural production of the farm used to embrace both cattle and crops, before the farmer geared down to arable only).
Other previously-mentioned aspects of importance in clearance projects appear here, too, such as gaining control over land (through
ownership); in addition, this case demonstrates (in the shape of the clearing project carried out over several generations) how the roots of clearance projects lie in the land and especially the time-depth perceived in it.
Domain management implies a deliberate and on-going engagement in the guise of occasional discrete land deals here and there. Another farmer who has recently bought, exchanged and cleared lands, has already started speculating, in a manner similar to that of the farmer in the first example, on his next move concerning a piece of land that he today manages on lease (Fig. 53). If he was offered to buy the land around here, he would clear the forest stand adjacent to the field, because “it's good soil” (farmer interview).
Reorganisation of the farm domain remaining the goal of domain management, it is of importance, in this context, that land when available also represents a potentiality (implying a reserve for the future); this is why the farmers seek to take advantage of land-acquisition opportunities. The farmer on the farm CF 1 has bought land several times (they started with 18 ha and own today 95 ha of arable land). The farmer had this to say to explain his most recent land purchase including forest, some non-productive forest, and arable land: ”If somebody else had bought the land, I would have lost 5 hectares of arable land” (farmer interview). This suggests that arable land in the region is a scarce resource: small differences count. This farm in fact exemplifies a situation in which, when land was not available within an acceptable distance and the farm needed to expand, the clearance project offered the Solution. The continuation of the clearance project was dropped when arable land was after all put up for sale and lease. In this is example, too, there is an interaction between clearance, leasing and land purchase as moves in domain management, which in this case is driven by the overarching goal of placing
land close at hand, at the same time as such domain management accommodates flexibility in following spatial intentions. Another farmer intensively working on a clearance project (20 ha) recently promptly accepted a tenure offer from a neighbour who fell ill. An opportunity to gain access to more land may thus appear unexpectedly in the nearest neighbourhood, and if so, the chance is readily picked up. Taking on the management of land that has been left
‘managerless’ also shows how both parties, in both the above-mentioned cases, share the value that land should be kept open. It is easier not to need to clear, but it is also a good deed to manage somebody else’s land.
My conclusion is that spatial qualities attaching to the single pieces of land in different ways
appear to be utilized by farmers as they strive for best farming practice in their specific circumstances. The spatial qualities are either constraints generated by materiality such as distances between fields, shade, or corners which hamper ease of cultivation; or benefits similarly created by material settings such as fertile soils, or by neighbourhood situations which either enable or constrain the ‘moving’ of land closer to the farmstead. Precisely these kinds of thinking were exemplified above as aspects of overall domain management, and the examples illustrate the flexible relationships of spatial intentions and various separate, step-by-step solutions. Overall, the moves of domain management aim at making land ‘mobile’.
Figure 54. Advancing Clearing, Farm CF 7
Part C. Farm-Based Processes and Landscape Effects
To recapitulate, this thesis aims at proposing interpretations of the farm-based processes that produce specific land-cover dynamics concerning the distribution of forest and arable land. In Part C, I elaborate on interpretations of the farm-based processes and the landscape level implications of the land-cover dynamics discussed in Part B.
In the first chapter Land Management and Time-Economy, I focus on aspects of time usage. I propose in this thesis the concept of time-economy for describing the balance between the daily in-flow of time resources that can be allocated to land management and the time-demand of land management tasks (a kind of out-going time, I return to define this concept).
In the second chapter Orientations in Land Use, I focus on land-cover continuity in the case of the sustained openness of arable land demonstrated by the findings in this study. As explained earlier, management of arable land is not legally required by itself (see Rural Boreal Sweden); I therefore take the continued sustenance of fields as an expression of a (land use) choice between reforestation and openness of land. I suggest the interpretation of the farm background of the displayed land-cover continuity as being rooted in valued-based processes that halt reforestation of the arable land on the land use farms and motivate farmers to seek solutions for continued land management despite small economic returns and/or capacity restrictions. In the third chapter
Land-Cover Change in the Rural Landscape, I discuss rural landscape dynamics and land-cover change by separate analyses of the landscape dimensions of the two land-cover processes identified; I also touch upon the landscape neighbourhood as an important factor influencing land use decisions.
First, I make a short recapitulation of the farm-based land cover processes presented in Part B.
Hay as the main crop and the small herds of cattle on the land use farms provide the landholders with flexible solutions that secure the status of the arable land. The major changes reported during 1990–2010 are that land management is increasingly in the hands of leaseholders and wild boars are wreaking increasing havoc on arable land. The farm projects have in the majority of cases studied transformed into ‘living on the farm’, enabled by non-farming sources of income such as a farm-based non-farming enterprise, farm payments (since 2005), employment in the larger towns of the region, or retirement pension. I have suggested that farmers have lowered their ambitions, targeting levels of return possibly only compensating for the inputs they put into farming; and that this has happened due to various constraints experienced. The farmers do not engage in a variety of farm-based projects besides farming; rather, the land use activities are motivated by fodder production and the striving to keep the lands open. Both the few cases in which novelties have found space on the farm
and the farmer’s reasoning make plain that new activities may be incorporated if they fit in with the farmer's overall goals and the timespatial order established on the farm.
The clearance studies also show that the process of clearing land is about producing a kind of purified state, the soil as an abundance, to adapt to Hägerstrand’s (1993) term for the ‘fine-grained things’ which are part of the process landscape, the arable land is created by removing what accordingly can be termed coarse-grained things such as root-sticks and stones. The farm studies indicate that both the producing and the sustaining of open arable land take time as well as effort; I therefore conclude that the ability of farmers to invest time in farming is crucial for
land management. New solutions of land management are asked for in the face of a reduction of farmers’ time input into the arable land due to allocation of time to other occupations. Such solutions include land management by leaseholders, and less intensive modes of haymaking and animal husbandry that allow for partial withdrawal from farming activities while continuing on the path of farming (farm management). Lease-out does not necessarily entail intensive land management on leased fields – in part due to the leaseholders’
own projects being less intensive, in part due to the small size of many fields triggering a less intensive mode of cultivation.