AGRICULTURAL POLICY STILL A MATTER OF DEBATE

The Federal Council has outlined the evolution of Swiss agricultural policy beyond 2022. This strategy is described in AP22+, which sets out 13 environmental goals relating to areas such as pesticide use, biodiversity and protection of the landscape, soil and climate. This project has been under consultation for several years, an indication that the stakes are high and the overarching policy decisions are hard to make. This is because future agricultural policy will have to take into account the demands of both society and farmers, and the two do not always make good bedfellows.

In December 2020, the Council of States returned the strategy to the Federal Council. The senators want the Federal Council to look at measures designed to maintain the country’s current level of self-sufficiency and to ensure the use of closed cycles for all nutrient sources throughout the value creation chain. The Council of States also wants to reduce the distortion of competition between domestic production and imports. This decision will mean a delay in the introduction of the new agricultural policy, which may not come into force until 2025.

The use of agritech to support farmers is explicitly mentioned in the Federal Council’s initial strategy. This delay could encourage the government to incorporate it to an even greater degree. The federal strategy will also have to encourage innovation in the broader sense if new alternatives and ideas are to be found. This applies particularly to the subject of CO2.

In the following chapters, we outline a number of practical solutions, some already mature and others still in the pipeline.

J A C Q U E S B O U R G E O I S Member of the Swiss National Council and former Director of the Swiss Farmers’ Union

4.0 = facilitated business management, reduced bureaucracy and greater precision: opportunities that Swiss agriculture must seize.

Existing and future solutions

In the following pages, we explore the innovative agritech solutions being developed in Switzerland. For clarity, we have classified these in terms of the outcomes they are designed to achieve. To avoid repetition, we have chosen to present each solution under the outcome where, in our opinion, it is having the greatest impact. Making impact decisions is not always straightforward, particularly given the importance of the context we are dealing with. The many variables and changes in this sector mean that it is likely to evolve even faster in the coming years. The reader will, however, easily be able to decide for him or herself whether a particular product is better suited to solving a different problem.