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Home -> Agriculture and forestry
Farming and Forestry
The Ormsätter farm covers today about 325 hectares (officially divided into two estates Ormsätter 2:1 and Ormsätter 2:3). At the farm there is organic farming, that for some years has been connected to the Swedish ecological certification organisation KRAV.
The forestland mostly contains pine of varying age classes, of which the productive forestland is about 150 hectares. In addition to this, a large part of the land is hilly forest ground not utilized for commercial purposes.
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The Forest
The forest close to the archipelago is generally dominated by pine trees (pinus sylvestris), of different classifications but mainly P 20 - P 28. These value terms stand for the type of wood (P = pine, normally associated with moraine dominated soil) and the calculated height in 100 years. P 24 stands for sand/moraine soil intended for pinewoods that are calculated to an average height of 24 metres in 100 years.
Spruce occurs as well but sparingly and more often is mixed with pine tree, but still can be found alone often late planted in better soils close to farming land. The spruce’s advantages are that it is not as attractive as pasturage to such animals as the elk and that it will have a higher growth in good soil. The spruce’s disadvantages are that its roots are shallow and is therefore more sensitive to storms then pine. Also the spruce is sensitive to an incipient decay known as dote, an illness that makes the tree rotten from the inside.
The pine tree’s biggest disadvantage is that during late winter it is eaten by elk thereby the risk for damage is great. This grazing is quality reducing to the future classifiction of the timber and means large economical losses to forest owners and to the industry as a whole.
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Ormsätter, farm centre from above. The surroundings are dominated by pinewoods, farming lands and scattered pasture.
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Forestry - biggest of them all
The forestry industry in Sweden is larger than all other domestic industries put together and is therefore one of the most important. All forestry production in Sweden is regulated by the forestry conservation law, which all forest owners have to follow. The forest conservation law, among other things deals in how much forest that can be felled at an estate and when.
How the reforestation of the regeneration felling should be planned and minimum levels of the density in the usage etc. The supervisory authority is the National Swedish Forest Administraition that actively works to ensure the long term strength of the industry in Sweden is maintained and improved.
Forest owners have to have a forest management plan. This is made by trained forest technicians or a forest guard and attends to the estate’s forest holdings together with what actions that are planned, within 5 years, within 5-10 years and after 10 years.
Fells are planned from these and are made when the largest profit can be realized, in regards to future growth in the area as well as quality changes.
The selection that is extracted is normally pulpwood and timber. The pulpwood is used to make primary paper products, the biggest centres for this in our area are Braviken in Norrköping, and Billerud in Skärblacka. The pulpwood is measured in Sub (solid cubic underneath bark), or weighed by the industry and payment based on that.
From the timber, also called white wood, planks and boards to the construction industry are made. Each piece of timber is rated by itself and is judged on a six grade scale, that is the base of the forest owners payment for the timber.
White wood is of more value than pulpwood, and that is why the whole industry during the growth period is aiming to have as large a volume as possible at the felling.
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Forestry in Sweden is the outstanding branch of the nation’s whole economy, where 70 million cubic metres of forest is felled every year and the export of wood products totalling SEK 125 billion gives the country large earnings.
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Agriculture
In our part of the country the farmland mainly consists of moraine clay soil and moraine moss soil, also called "light soil". The fields are smaller in size and have a larger element of stones and gravel which gives a lower yield and is harder to work than the clay dominated soils in Östergötland’s flat landscape. This means that our landscape is better for our own intergrated productions, for example animal rearing when you grow a large part of the fodder yourself and keep a high proportion of ley or pasturage rather than pure grain production.
We have been practising organic crop production for more than 10 years and the advantage of this is that the costs of lime fertilizer and pesticide is held down. The disadvantages are more weed, lower yield, larger fluctuation in unfavourable years and that the soil quality in the long term risks leaching away certain nutrients, as these are not added by artificial fertilizer. Of course, these can be added in other ways, such as natural fertilizer but that would require organic animal rearing at the farm, in such a way that the fertlizer would be accessible.
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Because of new rules supporting farms ley grassland is more prevalent.
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Agriculture in the Future
As the price of produced crops during the last decade has gone down drastically, the situation together with increased costs, has made farm support much much more important than before. The farm support is a compensation from the government and the EU, to the production costs in relation to the low price of grain. Moreover, the farm support makes an incitement to maintain a domestic provision production and an open landscape. The support is however questioned by many countries within the EU, and will probably in the long term be revised or disappear totally. What will happen to our farming then?
It is safe to say that the farmers who still want to be in the industry, have to be a lot more flexible than today and with short notice be prepared to change their production direction and crops.
Mostly discussed right now is growing for the fuel industry. From the crops, you can extract both ethanol and biogas. The organisation Swedish Raps believe that the growing of oil plants in the long run will grow massively. From rapeseed you can extract rapeseed oil (RME – Rapeseed Methyl Ester) which is already today used in some diesel fuel mixtures. One thing is clear though – an uncertain but exciting future awaits the farmers of today.
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To be flexible and at short notice change both crops and direction will become more important to farmers in the future. The question is, will the open farming landscape be maintained?
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Rickard & Malin Hellström
Jonsberg Ormsätter
610 26 Vikbolandet
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Phone: +46 (0) 125-311 54
Mobile: +46 (0) 70-799 80 00
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info@ormsatter.se
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