The Picking of Wild Berries in Finland in 1997 and 1998

Nation-wide figures related to berry-picking in Finland were based on postal questionnaire surveys carried out in 1997 and 1998. The sample in 1997 consisted of 6849 households and the response rate was 60%. The questionnaire was concerned with the utilization of all non-wood forest products. In 1998, a subsample of 1858 households was taken and the new questionnaire focused solely on berries and mushrooms. The response rate was 69%. In 1997, Finnish households picked 56.5 million kg of wild berries (95% confidence limits were 52.3 and 60.4 million kg). In 1998, a total of 49.7 million kg (44.0, 55.3) was picked. In 1997 the proportion of products sold was 27%, harvested by 5% of households. It is possible that the quantity of wild berries picked in 1997 was higher than in any year previously, but because of a lack of reliable earlier data this cannot be verified.