At the same time, the income structure of farming families is changing, with more and more of their members having outside jobs. In 1980, agriculture accounted for 11 per cent of the employed work force, providing 251,000 people with a livelihood. In 1999, the figures were 5 per cent and 121,000 people, respectively. Specialist farming includes horticulture, fur farming, fish farming and small-scale further processing of agricultural products. Rural enterprises are small businesses in rural areas.
Diversified farms engage in both traditional farming and small-scale entrepreneurship.
There is agriculture all over Finland, though in Lapland, the northernmost part of the country, it mostly takes the form of reindeer husbandry. Though Finland lies between 60 and 70 degrees north, farming is successful because the Gulf Stream keeps temperatures here between 3 and 4 C higher than in other areas at the same latitude. As Finland is nearly 1,100 kilometres long from north to south, there are considerable regional variations in climate. In southern Finland, the growing season starts in late April and lasts until mid October. The effective total temperature is between 500 and 1,300 C per day, and the average accumulated precipitation rate in the summer months is between 180 mm and 220 mm.