Swiss farmers joined European farmers in protest this week. Using the tractor, the go-to farm protest vehicle, thousands of farmers across the country assembled in various locations and arranged their tractors to make SOS symbols, reported RTS.
Like farmers across Europe, Swiss ones particularly object to the low prices they get for their produce, environmental rules they are forced to follow, and rising bureaucracy, which the say make their lives difficult. They also want to make themselves more visible to the rest of the community. Farming can be a lonely job that comes with little positive feedback.
In Switzerland, farmers must leave 3.5% of their land untilled to support biodiversity. One farmer interviewed by RTS described this as a poorly thought out policy. Reducing tillable land cuts output and adds to the economic pressure faced by some farmers.
However, a poll run by RTS suggests a majority (60%) of the public are not supportive of the current protests. Farmers in Switzerland receive much of their income from the government, and large farms that are already economic get the same support. Swiss farmers also gain a price advantage from import duties. Others object to spending so much of the nation’s revenue on an uneconomically structured sector. And many do not like the damage farming does to the environment, in particular the animal effluent and ecosystem harm from intensively farming livestock and damage from crop pesticide use.
Those supporting farmers typically point to how little control farmers have over the price at which the sell their produce. Supermarkets negotiate hard, leaving little in the hands of farmers. And it is clear that farmers on small uneconomically viable farms are struggling financially. Many have side jobs to make ends meet while others work themselves into the ground struggling to breakeven.
Many supporters also point to the necessity of food. Something so vital must be subsidised and supported they argue. But is the current system perpetuating a particular model of food production and preventing the emergence of others? And if so, what might new models of farming look like? And how could farmers be helped to make a shift within the business or out of it into other fields?
On Friday, an organisation representing Switzerland’s dairy farmers agreed to raise the target milk price by 3 cents a litre. Many farmers had asked for a 4 cent increase.
More on this:
RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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