Potatoes at a farm shop in Zurich.
Keystone / Gaetan Bally
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Poor harvest forces Swiss to import more potatoes
The weather forecast for the potato harvest is poor, with the consequence that the Swiss government has announced it is increasing import quotas by 15,000 tonnes.
“Potato growing has been difficult this spring because of the wet and humid weather,” Swisspatat director Christian Bucher told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS on Friday. There had been a “very severe infestation” of late blight, he said.
At Swisspatat’s request, the Federal Office for Agriculture authorised the import of a further 15,000 tonnes of processing potatoes under the tariff quota from September 1. This increase is valid until the end of the year.
According to Bucher, it will probably not be enough to cover demand. “We will have to wait a few weeks before we know the results of this year’s harvest,” he added.
Translated from French by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Life & Aging
Zurich: how the world capital of housing shortages is tackling the problem
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
In Switzerland more people are being referred to electrical therapies or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Are there similar approaches where you live?
Pope was a person full of respect: Swiss president
This content was published on
Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter, who is attending the funeral of Pope Francis, says the pontiff was always full of respect.
Ex-sect member sentenced in Zurich for sexual abuse
This content was published on
Zurich District Court has sentenced a former member of the globally active sect "Children of God" to a partial prison sentence.
SNB chairman does not rule out slowdown in Swiss growth
This content was published on
Martin Schlegel, chairman of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), does not rule out a weakening of the Swiss economy in light of the tariff dispute.
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.