Lönsam betesdrift genom stora sammanhängande betesmarker

Most Swedish semi-natural pastures, as well as most livestock herds grazing them, are small. This results in long fences per ha grazed and high labor demand for managing the grazing cattle. High building and machinery costs per head cattle are other problems connected with small-scale operations. These problems are especially pronounced in forest-dominated regions. By enlarging the present small, scattered pastures by incorporating adjacent overgrown pastures, marginal arable land and forest land, the fencing-cost per ha will be considerably decreased. By restoring the overgrown pastures, re-seeding the arable land with pasture grass, grazing some parts of the forest, and transforming other parts of it to pasture after clear-cutting, there will be pasture-bases for larger herds and thus economies of scale. The economic conditions for creating large connected pastures depend to a great extent on the opportunity cost of the land. After the de-coupling of EU-income support to grain production, marginal arable land in forest dominated regions has no opportunity cost in the long run when continued production presupposes new machinery and farmers demanding normal remuneration for their labor. Reforestation after clear cutting is not profitable on normal site quality classes at real rate of interest commonly required in other industries if the present real price for standing timber is unchanged during the rotation. Well manages forest grazing with suitable livestock density will have more advantages than disadvantages for timber production including reforestation and weed control. Thus, there are large areas of land suitable for creating large pastures in forest dominated regions with no opportunity cost. However, fertile flat land fields and the best forest land have too high opportunity costs for being profitably transferred to pasture. Larger herds of beef cattle imply considerably lower costs for labor, buildings and feed production per head as well as quantity discount and supplements. In a calculation-example, a suckler-cow herd of 20 cows grazing small scattered pastures gives a loss of 3 700 SEK per cow and year. By creating 50 ha large pastures of land with no opportunity cost and increasing the herd size to 200 cows the loss will become changed to a profit of 300 – 1 700 SEK per cow and year. The higher gain will be obtained if the cows are wintered out-doors with only a roof in wind-protected area as shelter. Forest edges can be suitable wind-shelter and dry forest-ridges in a section of a large connected pasture can be suitable land for out-wintering cattle. The extensive pasture-forest mosaics not only have economic but in many cases also cultural historic and environmental advantages. They will be more like the Swedish 19th century landscape than the present landscape dominated by dense spruce forests, large rectangular intensively cropped arable fields and small scattered pastures. Large connected pasture mosaics also reduce the risk of local extinction of grassland species thanks to larger population sizes and better possibilities of re-colonization.