Legislation to encourage the reservation and afforestation of agricultural land was introduced in Finland in 1969. The aim was to reduce agricultural production and rationalize farm structure at a time when two decades of agricultural progress had brought about considerable over production of certain agricultural goods. At the same time, Finnish forest industries had expanded considerably and were facing raw material constraints. Field afforestation was seen as a contribution to improving roundwood supply in the future. A traditional element of agricultural policy has been the expansion of agricultural land. This was particularly the case in the 1950s and 1960s following the ceding of Finniah Karelia to the Soviet Union in 1944, with the loss of 420 000 ha of fields. Strong regional variations in both field afforestation and land clearance activities have resulted from the post-1969 land use policies. While regional variations in field afforestation have been explained by variations in regional and local variations in socio-economic development, as well as farm typology, the apparently strong and positive correlation of areas with a high intensity of field afforestation and areas exhibiting considerable land clearance activities remains to be explained. As a measure to reduce agricultural production and to increase the production of commercial roundwood, field afforestation cannot be considered a success. The field reservation and afforestation programme revealed the weakness of short-term agricultural policy-making in a sensitive socio-economic climate, further complicated by the failure to integrate agricultural and forestry policies.
