Norway: Set operation with NoFence - when past and future unite

For centuries, Norwegian farmers have driven their livestock up into the mountains for summer grazing. It may seem old-fashioned, but perhaps there's a renewal on the way that can future-proof summer grazing.

By Simme Eriksen

Disclaimer: Please note that this text has been translated from Danish to English automatically and may contain errors.

A sæter is an old Norwegian word for a grassland located in the mountains that can only be grazed during the summer months. Many people in Norway associate farming with summer sæter farming. Either the whole family moved to the summer pasture during the summer months, or the dairy cows and dairy goats were moved to the pasture together with a milkmaid.

Interest in preserving the summer pasture

Norwegian sources estimate that there were over 100,000 herdsmen at the peak. Today there are 700 left. The number is still falling, but there is a growing interest in keeping as many as possible alive, especially since sæterdrift was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2024.

In connection with a network meeting for advisors and researchers in organic dairy farming in the Nordic countries in Norway in 2025, we visited several sæter farms. Two visits in particular revealed a great desire to preserve the sæter farm through renewal. Both were young farmer couples who wanted to maintain pasture farming, even though it is a lot of work to move the animals in the mountains for a short period of summer grazing.

Milking robot in a shipping container

The first farm has built a milking robot into a large shipping container. The entire container is moved to the field and the cows are milked with exactly the same robot they know from the property down in the valley. On this property, all animals - dairy cows, young cows, sheep and pigs, as well as various pets - are moved to the field with the whole family. They live here for 8-10 weeks, after which everything is moved back down. A practice that is only possible thanks to a relatively large subsidy from the government.

Young animals with NoFence

On the other farm, they have also rethought pasture management. Here, only the young animals, i.e. heifers, are allowed on the pasture. The innovation consists of using NoFence as fencing. One of the major challenges of pasture management is fencing in rough terrain. The use of NoFence has solved this challenge to their great satisfaction. The heifers have quickly learnt to understand the system with a warning sound, and should one of them stray outside the pen, they always return immediately because the rest of the herd remains in the pen. The system is controlled via an iPad or mobile phone, where the boundaries can be drawn and moved without any other requirements than access to the internet. And this is everywhere in Norway.

Far more advantages than disadvantages

When asked directly, the young farming couple could not recall a single time when the fence had failed. The only disadvantage they could think of was the system's limitation on how narrow a corridor you can make if, for example, you want to move heifers between two pens. But they consider this a minor detail, pointing out that the benefits far outweigh such small challenges. In their experience, the possibilities for grazing natural areas that are difficult to fence have become much better and that these kinds of technological solutions are not a threat to the old herding system, but on the contrary can help to keep it going.