Census of agriculture (discontinued), 1999

In this context, supplemental industry refers to an activity that uses the land, buildings or machinery belonging to the holding. The most common supplemental activity is machinery-related services carried on by around 15 000 holdings. The next most common activities are rental of hunting and fishing rights, processing of own timber (sawmill) and rental of outbuildings and farmhouses.

Supplemental industries are most common in Eastern Norway and on the largest farms. On farms with at least 200 decares of grain, 60 per cent of the holdings have one or another form of supplemental industry.

Several of the industries falling under the definition of supplemental industry require little or no work input. For example, there is little labour input connected with renting out hunting or fishing rights or renting out outbuildings. Average labour input ranged between 300 and 500 hours on farms engaged in supplemental industries. The average in south-east Norway was 500 hours, while in Northern Norway it was 300 hours per farm. On the smallest farms with less than 150 decares of agricultural land in production, just under 500 hours were invested per farm, while the input on larger holdings was around 350 man-hours.

Sample of complete census

The newest results presented in this article are based on a sample of examined questionnaires from the complete 1999 farm census. For this reason, the figures cannot be broken down into smaller levels such as counties and municipalities. The suppliers of the data recorded their labour input as man-hours, but in this article man-hours have been converted into man-years. A man-year in agriculture or horticulture is 1 875 hours, while a man-year in other contexts is 1 750 hours. Caution should be exercised in comparing the results with earlier surveys.

Tables

• Table 3 Number of holdings with other acitivities related to the farm and labour input in these activities, by region, size of agricultural area in use, area of grain and oil seeds and number og dairy cows. 1999*.