Frequently asked questions
Subjects:
Introduction
When speaking of reindeer husbandry, every now and then one encounters people who want to know more; fill their information deficit and to find out whether the rumours are true. What is reindeer herding like? How do you handle this-and-that? Curiosity is for good, and the more prejudices it corrects, the better. Answering these questions, however, is not always easy. How to explain reindeer herding to someone whose knowledge on agriculture and forestry is limited to cottage rentals, EU grain directives and the 5am morning milking? There is a conceptual gap between reindeer herding and current farming practices. The bridging of this gap is essential for communication alone, not to mention ensuring the possibility for reindeer herding and its future prospects.
Currently reindeer herding is still closer to natural economy than to agriculture, for it has adapted to the Lappish natural circumstances like the reindeer have. Agriculture, on the other hand, tries to adapt the nature to its premises. No wonder that some take reindeer husbandry as the vocation of the lazy, for it does not require the same stubborn pioneer mentality as clearing a grain field and building a barn, for example.
One thing that agriculture and reindeer herding have in common is that also in reindeer herding big material investments are often needed. The gathering of the reindeer requires ATVs and snowmobiles, and herding dogs need food and attention, too. The building of fences and slaughterhouses takes money, know-how and time. The vet has to be paid, gasoline is expensive, the distances long and the winters cold. Yet reindeer herders do not get the same kind of support as farmers, because e.g. a snow mobile is not considered a means of production in the same way as a combine harvester.
Of course it could be possible to avoid some of today's problems by changing reindeer herding into the direction of other cattle husbandry. At present reindeer herding seems to be considered some kind of berry-picking, more of a hobby than a way to make your living even though it is practised professionally (and at much larger a scale than berry-picking). Should the use of available natural resources be turned into the altering of the availability and to cultivation? And if this was done to reindeer herding, would reindeer herding exist anymore?
It could definitely adapt to the current structures of our society, but the society keeps changing. Reindeer herding, in contrast to many other occupations, has survived so many societal changes and revolutions that it makes no sense to let go and be torn apart by the change at this stage.
Maybe the most important thing and the one hardest to understand is that reindeer herding is a societal phenomenon, not just a means of production but a living in every meaning of the word. At national level its economic importance is small, but locally it is very important to the individuals' income as well as the local culture. The utilisation of deer, later reindeer, has not been vital only to the Finnish Sámi people but many other arctic peoples as well, and this is not a random twist of fate, much less an unimportant coincidence.
The following documents are meant to act as a source of information both to the uninformed and the interested. Knowledge is no longer so hard to come by that its mere possession could be equalled to power, but it is the prerequisite of understanding, which grows more and more important at the same rate as the world keeps getting smaller.
On the land use issues
Forest management methods in northern Lapland have softened immensely in the last years. The loggings have been reduced by 25% since the 70s to take reindeer herding into account. Of the Upper Lapland (Inari, Utsjoki and Enontekiö municipalities) about 90% of the total land area is protected. The same goes for half of the forests. Is nothing enough for reindeer herders? Do you demand that timber production be shut down completely?
It is true that the pace of loggings has been slowed down. However, the forests that were logged earlier have not recovered to the state they were in before the loggings; and they will never make it before they are logged again. This is why the logging of any forest area that has grown untouched so far is making the situation worse. Forests that have been managed before can be thinned and sometime in the future clearcut, but the existing old-growth forests should be left out of the loggings altogether. If the logging residual is collected from the forests, thinning can be even beneficial to reindeer herding. Further, this produces bio fuels, the use of which is much saner than of oil.
Even though about half of the forests in Inari are protected, the protected areas are distributed unequally among the reindeer herding co-operatives' areas. The Muddusjärvi co-operative, for instance, has no protected forests in its winter pastures and if the plans of Metsähallitus are carried out, all old-growth forest will be logged. In the Muotkatunturi co-operative the forests that are planned to be logged are in the areas where horsetail lichen grows and the lichen is a vital source of nutrition for the reindeers in late winter.
These days the forest growth in the Upper Lapland exceeds the rate of loggings. More forest gets freed from forestry than is subject to it.
When a forest is taken into the cycle of logging, it means that it will be manipulated at a regular interval of some decades. Eventually, when the trees are big enough, the forest is clearcut. A forest taken up for forestry never "gets freed" from it. The fact that there are less final fellings does not really help the pasture situation. It just slows the process of deterioration.
Reindeers do use managed forest areas as pasture but these are not as valuable as old, untouched forests. Old forests with their horsetail lichen pastures are crucial especially in late winter and spring.
Reindeer owners too own forests. Why do they criticise state loggings but log their own forests; and this they do with heavy machinery and not with loggers?
Many own some land as part of their estate which they have bought from the state with a mortgage (as a part of a housing strategy of the government for reindeer herders in the 1970s). It has often been necessary to log some forest to pay back the loan to the state. The structure of subsidies to reindeer husbandry also drives people to log their forests: a reindeer owner can get financial support as full-time herder only if (s)he owns more than 80 reindeers. Because every reindeer herding co-operative has been allocated the maximum allowed number of reindeers by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and this quota is in most cases full, a young reindeer owner cannot increase his livestock by slaughtering less but only by buying reindeers of other owners. The money needed can be obtained by felling forest.
The forest areas of the reindeer estates are only some per cents of the total forest area of Inari. That is why the impact of forestry here is smaller than that of the Metsähallitus's on state lands. The state should also take a stronger responsibility for the total land use than a single reindeer owner. Another significant difference is that the income obtained by logging the private land stays in the area and in reindeer herding, whereas logging state forests does not benefit reindeer herding. A part of the private forestry money is naturally paid to the state as taxes.
Like other private forest owners, reindeer owners sell their timber by standing sale. The buyer – usually a big forest company – is responsible for the actual felling. It is not the reindeer owners' fault that the company uses heavy machinery instead of more labour-intensive methods. It is a more of a general problem in Finland that it is uneconomic to log one's own forest or have it logged by a third party and then sell the timber. Selling it to the companies when it is still standing gives much bigger profits. The system decreases the employment in the forest industry and thus the total income from forests in the countryside.
All reindeer owners nowadays have to have a car a snow mobile, an ATV and lots of other machines. Because of these, the amount of reindeer doubled from the 1970s to the 1990s and this caused erosion of the pastures. Are the financial difficulties and the insufficiency of pastures not self-inflicted by the profession?
It is true that the number of reindeer increased from the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. In the beginning of the 1970s there were great reindeer losses and the number of reindeer was a fraction of what it had been. From the beginning of the 1990s, the maximum number of reindeer allowed to herding co-operatives have been reduced without any compensation to reindeer herders. What other labour group would accept direct cuts to their salaries? It is clear that the number of reindeer affects the pastures, but the situation is worsened by the fact that the usable winter pastures have diminished dramatically at the same time. How can it be expected that reindeer owners cut down on their livestock if all other harmful ways of land use are increasing on the pastures simultaneously?
The acquisition of machinery and the increasing reliance on it is also partly due to other forms of land use. If the pastures had less interference, the equipment would experience less wear and consume less fuel. Another problem is that the quotas cause the compulsory sale of meat in the late autumn. This lowers the income compared to a situation where the laws of supply and demand could set the price of the meat.
What can I do?
Eat reindeer meat!
Travel in Lapland; get to know the reindeer husbandry and the people in the trade.
Follow the discussion and try to keep in pace. One big problem is that people know nothing about reindeer husbandry and thus won't get involved.
Write to newspapers if you notice that some decisions have a harmful effect on reindeer herding.
Write to the officials, like Metsähallitus, and to different ministries. Tell them that you think the needs of reindeer herding should be taken seriously and that reindeer owners should have better chances to participate in making the decisions that affect their living.
Metsähallitus
Metsähallitus CEO Jan Heino
PL 94
01301 Vantaa
jan.heino@metsa.fi
Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry
Minister Juha Korkeaoja
PL 30
00023 VALTIONEUVOSTO
juha.korkeaoja@mmm.fi
Ministry of Finances
Minister Antti Kalliomäki
PL 28
00023 VALTIONEUVOSTO
antti.kalliomaki@vm.fi