Agriculture in Switzerland
Agriculture in Switzerland, one of the economic sectors of the country, has developed since the 6th millennium BC and was the principal activity and first source of income until the 19th century. Framework of rural society, agriculture has as main factors the natural conditions (climate), the demographic evolution and agrarian structures (institutional and legal norms). In Switzerland, it has become much diversified, despite the small size of the territory, owing to the geographical diversity of the country.
The impacts of agriculture in Switzerland are not only economic. The agricultural sector uses around half of the surface area of the country and contributes in the shaping the Swiss landscape. Swiss farmers also produce more than half of the food consumed in Switzerland, thereby helping to safeguard national food security and culinary traditions.
History
Prehistory
In Switzerland, the processes of establishment of the
From the
The
The transition from the Bronze Age to the
Roman era
In
Middle Ages
For the
From the 9th to the 12th century, the growth of the population led to the growth of cultivated areas. How did animal husbandry evolve? This question, made difficult by the extreme scarcity of sources, is controversial. Clearing culminated in the 12th-13th centuries. To feed a growing population, cereal growing was intensified on the Plateau, on the one hand by converting meadows into fields and by reducing the herd (especially small cattle, goats and sheep), on the other hand by improving yields by the transition to compulsory municipal rotation (village) and by technical progress such as the introduction of the plough. This development did not affect the high altitude areas, which were not very favorable to cereals; In the Alps and especially in the Pre-Alps, there was a specialization in animal husbandry from the 14th century onwards, under the influence (at least in central Switzerland) of ruling families who increasingly oriented themselves towards the urban markets of Northern Italy (cattle trade). Specialization made the peasants of the late Middle Ages dependent on the agricultural market not only for the sale of their products, but also for their supply. It favored regionalization on a large or small scale, for example in eastern Switzerland: vineyards in the Rhine valley, livestock in Appenzell, cereals on the Plateau. This leads to a division of labor between various agrarian zones.[1]
The cities had a great influence on the evolution of agriculture from the 13th century at least. Disengaging from the pure subsistence economy, peasants belonging to the elite, began to sell their surpluses on the urban markets. As for the bourgeois, they invested in the lands close to their city to produce easy-to-sell goods there: wine, meat, vegetables, fruit, flax, hemp and tinctorial plants. Agriculture also suffered the shock of the processes described under the name of the crisis of the late Middle Ages: for example, ownership structures modified by demographic evolution, vagaries of agricultural prices, rationalization and reorientation of social relations and dependencies.[1]
The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern era is characterized by a significant climate cooling, the Little Ice Age. Switzerland and a large part of Europe experienced at that time a greater frequency of cold and dry winters and springs with a tendency to wind, which is confirmed by historical research on the effects of climate: cereal crops, viticulture and dairy production all suffered from the spring cold (especially in April), generally followed by whole weeks of precipitation during the summer. In the phases of progression of the glaciers, more particularly between 1570 and 1630, the bad harvests due to the climate caused frequent high prices.[2]
Modern era
Despite the proto-industrialization that began in the late 16th century, the agricultural sector remained by far the most important branch of the Swiss economy throughout the early modern period. Although there is a lack of statistical data of sufficient quality, this seems to apply to all relevant variables: the capital stock, investments, quantity and value of production and finally also the number of people employed in agriculture. The vast majority of the population lived in and from agriculture, which until the 19th century was largely based on the regionally available resources.[1]
The agricultural sector therefore made a significant contribution to financing the public budget. On the wheat lands of the Plateau, it was subject to the constraints of crop rotation, feudal dues and the authority of the towns of which the peasants were the subjects. Communal regulations, very different from one area to another, determined the daily life of producers. In particular, they contained provisions on collective rights of use and on access to commons, they set local rules in terms of land transfers, access to the bourgeoisie, public assistance and the procedure to be followed in the event of social conflict. But all of this was taking place in a legally, politically and socially unequal society.[1]
With the exception of heavily exporting livestock areas, Swiss peasants worked mainly for their own consumption, a little for regional markets and rarely beyond. Moreover, only a wealthy minority produced surpluses for the market. It was especially the large farms who profited from periods of boom, for example by exporting to southern Germany during the Thirty Years' War. The majority of the rural population derived only ancillary income from the regional agricultural market and depended for their survival on the wealthy minority. If the upper strata aimed to create surpluses to be delivered to the market, in the middle and lower strata, men and women had to supplement the exploitation of their land with all kinds of salaried activities in petty commerce, crafts, industry or agriculture.[1]
Population growth, higher than the European average (doubling in 1700 and almost tripling in 1800 from 1500), was a challenge for agriculture. In early modern times, many new lands were opened up and more intensive methods were adopted. At the end of the 16th century already, on the southern edge of the Plateau, the rotation was supplemented or even replaced by an intensive grassland/cereal crop rotation, which caused new conflicts related to usage rights. In many areas of open land the production of grain increased in proportion to the population, as is shown, for example, by the tripling of the yield of tithes at Lucerne between 1500 and 1700. But where animal husbandry and protoindustry dominated, grain had to be imported from southern Germany or northern Italy. The population boom did not go without leading to fragmentation of property, multiplication of peasants lacking land, repeated famines, misery, increased cost of land and agricultural debt.[1]
While large farms progressed in Europe, Swiss agriculture remained the work of family businesses. In the 18th century, the extension of work at home procured accessory earnings and new means of existence for poor families, who launched themselves with all their might into industry while cultivating a cramped estate.[1]
The second half of the 18th century marks the beginning of profound changes in the open land areas (while the livestock areas had undergone their great transformation in the Middle Ages): new enclosures, introduction of the potato, sharing of the commons, sowing of fallow land and permanent stabling came to modify, more or less strongly according to the regions, the agrarian structures. The modernization of agriculture which took place between 1750 and 1850 constituted an agricultural revolution, even if it took place in fits and starts. The Old World slowly gave way to the new, and old and new methods of exploitation began to coexist. Around 1800, the irreversible movement had only just begun.[1]
19th and 20th century
The 19th century brought great changes to Swiss agriculture. The first agricultural revolution was completed around 1850, even if compulsory rotation did not completely disappear until the second half of the 19th century. Productivity increased thanks to improvements in continuous rotation and fertilizers, thanks to the elimination of fallowing and thanks to the beginning of mechanization. Livestock and the dairy industry spread to the Alpine foothills, cheese dairies appeared on the plains, first in French-speaking Switzerland. In the industrial society, agriculture increasingly became a distinct sector, though well integrated into the national economy through the market and through upstream and downstream activities.[1]
Faced with industrial growth, the agricultural sector shrinks, despite or because of its increased productivity: it employed around 500 000 people around 1860-1880, 250 000 around 1960, 125 000 around 1980, i.e. 60% of the active population in 1800 and 50% in 1850 (estimates), 31% in 1900, 19.5% in 1950 and about 4% in 2000, including, from 1950, part-time workers. But the huge increase in yields, especially since the 1950s, has allowed production to keep pace with population growth; the country's share of self-sufficiency has even increased. The annual added value of the primary sector amounted to 0.5 billion francs around 1880 (30% of the national total) and more than 10 billion around 1990 (about 3%). However, these figures do not really reflect the weight of agriculture, because they do not include the industrial activities located upstream and downstream, which became increasingly important in the 20th century.[1]
Advances in transportation brought about a global agricultural market, which placed the grain farmers of the Plateau in front of competition from cheaper foreign wheat, which in the 1860s brought about a second revolution: milk replaced cereals as a staple product. Natural conditions were favorable and sales assured, given growing demand everywhere, with foreign countries absorbing more than a quarter of production since the 1880s. New cheese dairies and processing plants (condensed milk, chocolate) were opened. Plowed fields decreased from 500 000 ha in the middle of the 19th century, i.e. approximately half of the useful agricultural area, to 200 000 ha before the
After the First World War, the supply difficulties encountered during the conflict and the cost of dairy monoculture, as soon as cheese exports began to decline, led the authorities to favor cereals at the expense of milk, but without big success. Things changed during the
The post-war period is characterized by the rapid change of structures, an enormous growth in yields and an increase in productivity superior to that of industry. This is a third agricultural revolution, based on the success of livestock farming, motorization (in 1992 the number of tractors equaled that of full-time farmers) and the ever greater use of chemical fertilizers and phytosanitary products. In the 1990s, deregulation and better respect for the environment brought new challenges for Swiss agriculture.[1]
Production
The
On the
Meadows and pastures make up three-quarters of farmland. Therefore, Switzerland is much more a pastoral than an agricultural country. It should also be noted that the proportion of the land devoted to pastoral pursuits increases, like the rainfall, from the west to the east, so that it is highest in Appenzell and St. Gallen and lowest in Geneva and Vaud.[6] The number of cattle is about 700 000. In summer they are supported on the ubiquitous pastures, including mountain pastures and alps (the highest in elevation), while in winter they are fed on the hay mown on the lower meadows or purchased from outside.[6] Swiss cheeses and dairy products are internationally well-known.
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Apples (Thurgau)
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Apricots (Valais)
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Chestnuts (Ticino)
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Dairy (Bern)
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Grapes (Vaud)
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Hay (Grisons)
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Maize (St. Gallen)
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Olives (Ticino)
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Potatoes (Bern)
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Rapeseed (Geneva)
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Rice (Ticino)
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Saffron (Valais)
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Wheat (Aargau)
Irrigation
Irrigation in Switzerland is focused in the Alpine valleys with low rainfall (the inner valleys). The best-known system of channels is that of the bisses in Valais (Suonen in Upper Valais). These are attested since the 11th century and they were numerous by the late Middle Ages. For centuries, this system of irrigation saw only a few technical evolutions. In 1900, there were 206 bisses totaling a length of about 1750 km. Sometimes capturing water from glaciers, they were mainly used to irrigate meadows and vineyards. A similar irrigation was also practiced in the Grisons, where mentions of Val Müstair (1211), Heinzenberg and Trin are known in the late Middle Ages. In Ticino, irrigation facilities are attested in 1296 in Giornico. Many other testimonies confirm the use of irrigation techniques in almost all the Alpine valleys.[7]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the modernization of agriculture, and in particular the use of
Economy
The primary sector occupies a minimal place in the Swiss economy because the costs do not allow sales abroad without state aid amounting to billions of
Statistics
According to the 2010 agricultural report of the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG),[12] Switzerland has 60 034 agricultural farms, and 166 722 people were engaged in agriculture, mostly family labour. Since the beginning of 2000, agriculture has seen the disappearance of 10 000 farms and 37 000 workers. The potential for reduction of small structures is now largely exhausted, notes the FOAG. The average agricultural income was around 60 000 Swiss francs in 2009. On the other hand, the agricultural sector is heavily indebted with a debt factor — i.e. the theoretical number of years to repay a loan — which has increased by more than a year and a half since 2000.[11]
Fertile arable land is constantly shrinking in Switzerland. The area statistics for 2005 show that between 1985 and 1997, agricultural and alpine areas decreased by 482 km2 (186 sq mi). Most (64%) of this area has been allocated to housing (urbanization), the rest has turned into forest, mainly on steep highlands.[13]
Organic farming and GMOs
Consumption of
See also
- Agroscope
- Appellation d'origine protégée (Switzerland)
- Fishing industry in Switzerland
- List of Swiss cattle breeds
- List of Swiss goat breeds
- ProSpecieRara
- Architecture in Switzerland#Vernacular architecture- rural architecture
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "Agriculture" (in French). Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates translated text from the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA License.
- ^ "Petit âge glaciaire". Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
- Swissinfo. 14 July 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ^ "Cultures fruitières". Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
- ^ "Rapport agricole 2022 - Fruits". Federal Office of Agriculture. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
Parmi les principaux types de fruits frais cultivés en Suisse (pommes, poires, abricots, cerises, pruneaux/prunes, fraises ; sans les fruits à cidre et le raisin)...
[Among the main types of fresh fruit grown in Switzerland (apples, pears, apricots, cherries, plums, strawberries; excluding cider fruit and grapes)...] - ^ Coolidge, William Augustus Brevoort (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). p. 242. .
- ^ a b "Irrigation" (in French). Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates translated text from the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA License.
- ^ "Article 104 of the 1999 constitution". Archived from the original on 6 July 2021. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
- ^ Charcoal production has for the same reasons been subsidized for a long time.
- ^ Cretegny, Laurent (2001). The Agricultural Policy Reform in Switzerland: An Assessment of the Agriculture Multi-functionality. West Lafayette: 4th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Purdue University.
- ^ ISBN 978-2-88053-138-6.
- ^ "OFAG, agricultural report 2010".
- ^ "Swiss agriculture in sharp decline for 10 years". tsr. 25 October 2010.
- Swissinfo. 2 December 2021. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
- ^ "Federal popular initiative 'for food products without genetic manipulation'".
- ^ Rio Declaration on Environment and Development Principles of Forest Management, Earth Summit, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 3-14 June 1992
External links
Media related to Agriculture in Switzerland at Wikimedia Commons