The Swedish grain production chain is characterised by a differentiation in
production and management of farms involved; specialised vegetable
production, integrated vegetable and animal production, professional, semiprofessional
and non-professional production, and a variation in size from a
few hectares to several hundreds of hectares. There is a tendency of
consolidation of farmland, and decreasing numbers of small-size farms. In
parallel, there is an on-going process of reducing the number of processing
facilities in order to reduce cost and take advantage of economies of scale.
Production units are centralised and drying and storage is increasingly
located to the farm level. In addition, increasing farm level storage is
assumed to increase the possibilities for coordination of grain collection
with deliveries of seed, fodder and fertilisers to the farms (Gebresenbet &
Ljungberg, 2001a).