Small and scattered fields are going out of use

Norway has 11 million decares of agricultural land, covering approximately 3.5 % of the country’s total land area. This land has been cultivated and can be used for food and fodder production. However, not all of it is actively farmed. This is evident from the fact that area subsidies are only applied for on about 87 % of the total agricultural land.

Area subsidies are granted only for land that is actively farmed. Therefore, agricultural land outside the subsidy scheme is described as “agricultural land that may be out of use.”

An unknown portion of this land is still maintained, at least to some extent. However, there is no data on how much is completely abandoned, and there are significant regional differences. In Troms and Finnmark, 38 % of agricultural land is out of use, compared to just 6 % in Rogaland.

Dr Svein Olav Krøgli has conducted mapping analyses to better understand agricultural properties with land out of use. He examined the number of land parcels per property, the size of each parcel, and the distance to the nearest active farm.

“Distance to the nearest active farm is a major factor. Agricultural properties with a high percentage of land out of use are usually located much farther from active farms than those with most of their land in operation,” Dr Krøgli explains.

The analyses show that properties with small and scattered fields are more likely to have land out of use. These fragmented areas are often expensive to farm and difficult to reintegrate into production due to the efficiency demands of modern agriculture.

“Our analyses help identify which areas might be easier to bring back into production and which ones would be more challenging to reclaim,” Dr Krøgli concludes.