Charakteristik und Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Lage des österreichischen Privatwaldes

2000

S. 99-103

8 Lit. Ang.

Unselbständiges Werk

200060490

Most of the forests in Austria belong to nonindustrial private forest owners, public forest ownership being restricted to some 20% of the forest area. Within the private forest sector, small scale farm forestry is prevailing. Like elsewhere in Europe, private forestry in Austria faces a whole bunch of challenges nowadays, bringing about not only threats but also some new opportunities. Rationalisation, diversification and co-operation have to be adopted as guiding principles so as to achieve sustained competitiveness. In essence, there are two forestry specific accountancy networks being operated for monitoring the economic conditions and developments in Austria's private forest enterprises. Small scale farm forestry is more or less represented by a small sub-sample of the Austrian farm accounting data network. About half of the forestry costs in this category pertain to the input of family labour. Value added amounts to more than 50% of the gross revenue and mostly contributes to the farm income. The bigger forest enterprises with more than 500 ha of forest land are well covered by a specific accountancy network. Data are recorded according to the principles of cost accounting. On average, private forestry is quite profitable, the profit-turnover-ratio lying by some 17%. However, medium-term developments indicate a decline in real wood prices and hence also in gross revenue and value added. In response, the forest enterprises succeeded in cutting their harvesting costs by 20%. Outsourcing has been the major measure for rationalisation during the last 20 to 30 years, the workforce being progressively replaced by contractors. The further reduction of administrative and overhead costs e.g. by means of closer co-operation in the field of management, is a major challenge especially fot the bigger forest enterprises.