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42
III. RURAL HUSBANDRY.
each occupy about V4 of the total of the cultivated area of Sweden, the rest, or about
V2, being distributed among farms with from 10 to 50 hectares of arable land.
The way in which the land is distributed varies greatly, however, in different
parts of the country. It has already been pointed out that on the open plains
of Sweden, with fertile clay-soils, large estates are comparatively numerous,
while the greatest number of the small farms is to be found in the highland
districts or the hilly tracts, where the soil is of a lighter character and is
broken by hills, forests, bogs, and other irreclaimable land. For example, the
land in the Mälaren districts and in the plains of Östergötland and Västergötland
is occupied for the most part by large estates and large and medium-sized
peasant-farms, while small farms of less than 20 hectares are incomparably most
numerous in Småland, Dalarne, and Norrland. In the neighbourhood of large towns
and industrial centres, where there are plenty of other occupations besides
farming, there have grown up, especially during the last few years, numerous
independent farms of such limited areas that they could not of themselves
possibly support their owners, being often little larger than building-plots.
While, in previous years, the number of large estates increased by small
farms being bought up, there has arisen during the last few decades a contrary
tendency to split up the large estates for the purpose of forming small farms
and especially small holdings (Sw. småbruk). This development has been made
possible by the increasing removal of the obstacles that legislation previously
placed in the way of the cutting up of the large landed estates into farms
whose area was below the limits of support for a family (besutenhet) and of
capability of paying taxes, and also by the creation of a new and convenient
legal form of cutting up estates, called "estate-dismemberment" (Sw.
ägostyckning). But, in addition to this, the formation of small holdings has been
promoted directly by the dismemberment and sale of Crown domains, the letting
out of small holdings on lease from the Crown forests (Forest holdings; Sw.
skogstorp) and by the granting of public means to form loan-funds for the
purpose of assisting the "own home" movement. In Norrland, on the other
hand, there was still continued, in connection with the development of the
lumber trade, the throwing of the farms into large estates, the saw- mill
companies buying farms with forest-land, in order to dispose of the timber, the
cultivated ground being usually leased to the former owner, or, in many cases,
afforested. It was especially in order to prevent the disappearance of the
independent peasant that the said enactment — "the estate dismemberment procedure"
(Sw. ägostyckningsförfarandet), — was passed, according to which forest land
can be sold from the farm separately from the farming land; but as this led
to the creation of farms which possessed no timber for home use, a state of
things which, in Norrland, is considered as being ruinous to agriculture, the
estate dismemberment procedure in Norrland has been suspended and a
prohibition has been issued against the sawmill-owners purchasing landed estates (see
the section concerning Agricultural Legislation: the Norrland Enactments).
One favourable circumstance is that, as a rule, the Swedish farms are in the
hands of the owners themselves. Of the total number of farms in 1911, only a
little more than 14 % were leased’, a very small number of the farms of the
smaller classes especially (10 and 13 %, respectively) are held on leases, but of
the larger estates, with a cultivated area exceeding 20 and 100 hectares of
cultivated ground, greater proportions (31 and 35 %) are let out on lease. It is
especially such land that is let on lease as, in consequence of its distant
situation, is inconvenient for the owner himself to farm, or as is owned by persons
who devote themselves to other occupations than agriculture. Farms held on
lease are more numerous, therefore, in connection with the larger estates,
especially such as belong to ironworks or sawmills.
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