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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2005

Sammendrag

Up to ca. 1960, the forest sector was the largest export sector in Norway. Since then its importance has decreased, until in 2003 the export value totalled only 2,5 % of the export sector. The import of forest products constituted a relatively higher share of the total import value than the export (about 3,3%). Pulp and paper, mainly newsprint, is the most important export product. The annual cut has declined 30 per cent over the last decade and in 2003 totalled about 7.5 million cubic metres. The reasons for this decline are not fully understood, but changes in ownership structure, low unemployment rates and good job opportunities outside of the forest sector and the abolition of cost-share programs are certainly some of the explanation. Private non industrial owners own 78,5 % of the forest area and the average size of a forest property is 57 hectares. Almost all fellings are certified, and there is an intensive ongoing debate on the need for protection of a larger forest area. There is a large potential for developing non-wood products and services, and the forest owners association have companies and organisations dealing with this. There is a demand from both domestic and foreign customers for non-wood products and services but the cooperation with the domestic tourist industry still has to be improved to coordinate this effectively. There is a weak entrepreneurship culture in the forest products industry, with a few regional exceptions. The culture is mainly production oriented and market competence and international orientation is needed. Compared with other industries in Norway the level of education is low in the forest products industry. A large public program was started in 2002 to stimulate innovation and competence building activities in the forest products sector.

Sammendrag

During the 1980s Norway was troubled with overcapacity in the agricultural sector. The rural development support scheme (RDSS) was introduced. Farmers were encouraged to invest in forestry-related projects and rural business. More than 15 evaluations of the RDSS are undertaken, all of them having severe methodological weakness. The following study introduces a new tool, when analyzing a public support scheme like the RDSS in Norway. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a multi-input, multi-output optimization model used to measure relative efficiency of the best practice counties. The analysis is a two-stage study. In step one, it is found that 13 of the 18 (72%) counties in Norway are generating less output in the form of employment from a given level of the RDSS-budget than technically possible. In step two, a reallocation of the budget is shown for the purpose of maximizing the output of job establishments in rural Norway. The DEA is seen as a useful tool in measuring the efficiency of the RDSS at regional level in Norway.

Sammendrag

Economic externalities of mitigating measures to reduce sheep losses to carnivores are not sufficiently addressed in Norwegian nature management. Evaluating such measures involves a "scale” problem: outfield (i.e. open range) grazing sheep have quite small home ranges, large carnivores from hundred to several thousand km2. Because these ranges are a different order of magnitude, exposure to mitigating measures taken in any sheep home range area might influence predatory behaviour outside that area. These external effects impact on society, the environment and other farmers and could outweigh any advantages. Scale consideration is of crucial importance in designing field research projects to explore such issues.

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Sammendrag

The Norwegian agri-food sector is under transformation, and as part of this the contractual relations between the various parts of the sector are rapidly changing. The purpose of this paper is to answer two questions: • How can these changes be explained? • What changes can be expected in the future? The analysis is based on insight from new institutional economics. The starting point is that the relations between agents depend on institutions and governance structure. Changes in one or both will influence the contractual relations. The paper focuses on relations between primary producers and first hand buyers of agricultural products. However, since changes at this part of the value chain is influenced by what happens down-stream, we take developments in down-stream parts of the chains into account as far as we find it relevant. […]