The numbers of farms in Switzerland has halved since 1980
Keystone
The trend for fewer but larger farms continued in Switzerland last year, with the total number dropping by 990 to 52,263. While small and conventionally farmed businesses were throwing in the towel, organic agriculture flourished.
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swissinfo.ch and agencies, swissinfo.ch and agencies/ts
The number of jobs in farming dropped 1.3% to 153,400, of which two-thirds were full-time, the Federal Statistical OfficeExternal link said on Thursday. It added that 55,600 women were employed in Swiss agriculture, with almost 3,000 being managers.
As in previous years, the number of farms with an area of more than 30 hectares rose, last year by 1.9%, while the number of very small operations continued to shrink, by 2.9%.
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Subsidies leave smaller farmers struggling
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For Swiss farmers, 2015 wasn’t a successful year. At the beginning of October, the Federal Statistical Office estimated that farmers’ incomes would on average be 11% lower than the previous year. Part of farmers’ incomes are direct government subsidies. One of the effects of the agricultural policy for 2014-2017 is that larger farms are favoured…
Reasons for this include the consequences of an agricultural subsidy policy that smaller farmers say favours larger and more efficient farms.
The organic boom continued, however. Last year there were 6,348 organic farms, 104 more than the previous year. Of those 104, 27% specialised in milk production and 12% in meat production.
The total utilised agricultural area came to an unchanged 1.05 million hectares. Of this, 14% was organic. Meadows made up most of the total (58%), with 38% devoted to crops (mostly wheat). The remaining 4% was divided between vineyards and orchards at 13,400 hectares and 7,200 hectares respectively.
Global trend
The long-term trend in Switzerland towards fewer farms is reflected in almost all Western countries.
The United States Department of Agriculture said in a February 2017 reportExternal link that “the number of farms in the United States for 2016 is estimated at 2.06 million, down 8,000 farms from 2015. Total land in farms, at 911 million acres [369 million hectares], decreased 1 million acres from 2015”.
Switzerland’s neighbours also saw the number of farms fall continuously between 2005 and 2013.
Figures from EurostatExternal link, the European Union’s statistics body, looked at “agricultural holdings”, which it defined as “a single unit both technically and economically, which has single management and which produces agricultural products”.
In Germany, they fell from 390,000 in 2005 to 285,000 in 2013. Over the same period, farms in France dropped from 567,000 to 472,000, in Italy from 1.73 million to 1.01 million and in Austria from 170,000 to 140,000.
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Swiss mountain farmers are a vanishing breed
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Hundreds of farms disappear each year in Switzerland. Some farms, especially mountain farms, are too small to survive. (RTS, swissinfo.ch)
They often rely on the support of charities, like Caritas, which sends nearly a thousand volunteers each year to help on farms for a few days or weeks at a time.
In some cases, farmers are forced to take up a second job just to make ends meet. They are constantly battling to survive and a bad year is all it takes for these farms to close down.
Even though Swiss farmers have access to government subsidies, these are often based on coming up with a new business model. This in turn often requires significant investment in modernisation that small farmers cannot afford, putting these subsidies out of their reach.
Those that manage to raise the capital to modernise are able to cope with the new realities thanks to the subsidies. These farmers see the subsidies as a salary for the important landscape services they provide and the high quality produce that comes out of their farms.
However, even these lucky farmers cannot remain complacent. They have to become market savvy in order to sell their produce and can no longer remain isolated from the wider world. The ones that succeed are more like entrepreneurs than the typical mountain farmers of yesteryears.
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With family farming chosen as the theme for this year's World Food Day, leading activist Vandana Shiva is calling for more support to small farmers.
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This is the conclusion of the latest AlpFUTUR research programme entitled, “The future of summer pastures in Switzerland”, presented on Tuesday at Schüpfheim in canton Lucerne. Every summer 17,000 mountain farmers take their herds up to the summer pastures where they continue age-old farming traditions and make quality cheese, cold meats and other farm products.…
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The study, released by the Federal Agriculture Office, reveals these realities and others about the modern women working in the agricultural sector. While two-thirds of respondents say they are generally satisfied with their lives and work – up 15 per cent from a similar study done ten years ago – the clash between tradition and…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.