Open access publications in the SLU publication database

Abstract

Self-employed family forestry refers to forestry work conducted by the owners themselves, either alone or with assistants, on their forest holdings. Despite the term self-employed, most persons are not economically dependent on the work, which is mainly conducted in their leisure time. In Sweden, half of all work time conducted and most of the lethal accidents in forestry occur in self-employed family forestry. Nevertheless, knowledge about the sector is limited. The objective of this thesis was to examine efficiency and safety in self-employed family forestry. Self-employment in family forestry was found to be common and there were no signs that it is likely to decline in the near future. Two thirds of the forest owners were to some extent self-employed in cutting, extraction, planting and pre-commercial thinning. Self-employed owners differed in a number of demographic factors (e.g. age and sex) compared to other forest owners. Extensive sales of suitable equipment indicated no decline in the near future. Firewood-processing was also found to be common in family forestry, as were related accidents. Exposure in terms of work time explained more of the accident occurrence than numbers of active persons, age or sex, and wedge splitter machines were associated with a disproportionably large number of accidents in terms of hours used. Since manual tree felling causes the majority of lethal accidents in forestry, a method was developed to enable evaluation of felling tools’ capacity to force trees to fall after cuts have been made in the stem. The method proved to be suitable for the intended purpose, and its practical utility was theoretically demonstrated in the assessment of a tools’ capacity to deal with trees with an unfavourable inclination. In addition, the impact of increased mechanisation of small-scale firewood-processing was analysed in an experimental study and was found to improve efficiency by 25-33%. It is argued that self-employment is important for Swedish forestry, especially for the future voluntary supply of raw material from family forests. Hence, self-employed family forestry deserves encouragement and further attention should be paid to the activity and the conditions that affect it in order to increase efficiency and safety.