Swiss tobacco production is on the decline; only about 200 farmers still grow this labour-intensive crop. Most of them are in the Broye Valley stretching across cantons Vaud and Fribourg. Their production covers only a small share of the tobacco consumed in Switzerland.
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Journalist and deputy head of the swissinfo.ch editorial group for German, French and Italian. Earlier, worked for Teletext and Switzerland’s French-language national broadcaster.
Thomas Kern was born in Switzerland in 1965. Trained as a photographer in Zürich, he started working as a photojournalist in 1989. He was a founder of the Swiss photographers agency Lookat Photos in 1990. Thomas Kern has won twice a World Press Award and has been awarded several Swiss national scholarships. His work has been widely exhibited and it is represented in various collections.
Less than 5% of the tobacco used by the industry in Switzerland comes from local producers. The crop plays a marginal role in Swiss agriculture. But the growers that remain want to preserve their traditional production. Two types of tobacco are grown in Switzerland: Burley, air-dried in traditional tobacco hangars, and Virginia, introduced to Switzerland in 1992 and oven-dried.
(Images: Thomas Kern/Text: Samuel Jaberg, swissinfo.ch)
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You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
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.