Practical Application of Multivariant Analysis Techniques to the Forest Management of Active Farmers in the Northwest of Spain

As managers almost exclusive in many worldwide forestry regions, non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners come to play a key role in balanced integrating the variety of forest uses and functions in policies for promoting and revitalising rural areas. In Galicia, a region in the Spanish Northwest, over 67.5% of forestland and 80% of woodland is managed by NIPF owners. Almost 40% of the Galician NIPF owners are agricultural or livestock farmers who manage a total of 169,755 agrarian holdings with woodlands. Although the number of agricultural holdings has dropped significantly over the last 60 years, farmers still constitute a representative section of the NIPF owner population in Galicia. Starting from an initial population of 31,285 active full-time professional farmers in the region, and based on data collected by a personal questionnaire from a sample comprising 4,383 of these professional farmers for the period 1993-2003, Discriminant Analysis (DA) was used to identify which socioeconomic, territorial and public-political factors were useful in distinguishing, and to what extent, that a certain population of Galician active farmers should opt to own and manage forestland areas within their agrarian holdings. The results suggested that the forestry production capacity for the area in which the agricultural holding is located, the size and the number of plots in the land base, the number of years the farmer has been the owner and the economic yield from the holding over the total family income were key factors in distinguishing between farmers with forestry activity (forestland owners) and farmers with no forestry activity (farmland owners). These findings could be used as a guide for designing, planning, and implementing research and policy measures that could allow NIPF landowners with farming and livestock activity to develop sustainable forestry, as key agents in promoting rural development.