The changing agricultural geography of a Finnish lakeland parish

This paper focuses upon a generation of agricultural change in Lapinlahti, a parish in the central Finnish lake district. The resettlement of displaced Karelian farmers in the immediate post-war years disrupted the established farming pattern here as elsewhere in Finland. A programme of forest clearance – socially desirable, but economically insupportable – changed the rural scene as well as providing new arable land for fodder crops to support increased dairy production. In the last decade, agricultural output surplus to market needs has been coupled with timber production insufficient to meet demand. Within the space of a generation, legislation encouraging afforestation and compensating for land withdrawn from cultivation has replaced subsidies for forest colonisation and land clearance. The reactions to this legislation of Karelians in Lapinlahti differ from those of the indigenous farmers.