Swiss Agricultural Policy Research Articles

Lessons learned and policy implications from 20 years of Swiss agricultural policy reforms: A review of policy evaluations

Learning from the experiences of other countries can support efforts to improve agricultural policies. Switzerland provides an interesting case because its policy is exceptionally targeted towards the establishment of sustainable production systems. We describe the history and the current state of Swiss agricultural policy, review evaluations of policy reforms, summarise their impact and outline the lessons learned for policy developments in other countries. We discuss four implications: i) some goals have been met, albeit at a high cost, and so, increasing efficiency of policies is key; ii) there is a need for more coherence and coordination regarding the different policy programmes (i.e. in the sense of a ‘food system policy’); iii) cross-compliance measures (i.e. minimum standards for receiving support) have an important leverage effect; and iv) policy differentiation (e.g. by spatial targeting) and increasing farmers’ discretion over how to achieve goals (e.g. by implementing results-based payments) are key for future policies.

Reducing feed-food competition with direct payments? An ex-ante assessment of economic and environmental impacts

Abstract Worldwide, feed-food competition for arable land is of rising concern. Swiss agricultural policy wants to promote grass-based cattle feeding through a voluntary direct payment program that is currently being revised. The current version of the program requires a minimum share of 75–85 per cent grass-based feed in the yearly rations for ruminants. The revision suggests financial compensation for using concentrates with limited crude protein (CP) content at different levels (18 per cent, 12 per cent, or 0 per cent CP) without limiting the amount of concentrates. In a multimodel approach, we investigated the adoption rate of the new program, and its effect on feed-food competition and environmental indicators at the national scale for Switzerland. We found that the less strict the requirements are regarding the protein content of concentrate feeds, the more cattle farmers will adopt the new program for protein-reduced concentrate feeding. We further found that, compared to the current version of the program, the revised program could have the opposite or none of the intended effects regarding feed-food competition and environmental indicators. Only banning the use of concentrates altogether moves the environmental indicators in the intended direction for the farms participating in the program. This study shows that ex-ante evaluations are important to expose ineffectual policy measures and improve their design before introducing new direct payment programs.

Why is agricultural policy not more environmentally ambitious? Comparing failed attempts in Switzerland

Switzerland is a country that has ambitious agri-environmental objectives, but its targets are continuously missed. The paper at hand examines this contradiction by describing and analysing three recent attempts to transform agricultural policies and change the unfortunate situation. The three cases were compared in a qualitative multimethod research design and along dimensions that are potentially relevant for explaining reform failures. While the attempts depicted involved distinctive governance pathways, they all failed to meet their objectives because of the large disadvantages their realisation would have generated. These included, above all, a reduction of the national self-sufficiency rate. It is concluded that the strategy of providing incentives for mere extensification has reached a dead end. New strategies to tackle food consumption patterns appear to be more promising. • Recent attempts to “green” Swiss agricultural policy have failed, albeit on different levels. • A common reason for failure was an apparent target conflict with self-sufficiency. • Need to shift from national production intensities to broader food policy measures.

Can agricultural policy achieve environmental goals through an indicator-based direct payment system?

Abstract Indicator-based frameworks for assessing farms’ environmental performance have become a resource for environmental knowledge regarding the impacts of agricultural practices. The present study explores whether a novel indicator-based direct payment system, which focuses on the farms’ environmental impact, could better target Swiss agricultural policy and help achieve its environmental goals. The system covers the environmental topics of biodiversity, nutrients and climate, plant protection products, and soil. Despite high direct payments, simulations with an agent-based agricultural sector model show that such indicator-based payments have a limited impact. For example, the decrease in the animal population is only moderate. Though direct payments alone can hardly lead to the desired reduction in Switzerland's environmental pollution, they could help make important contributions to a more targeted distribution of environmentally oriented direct payments and steer agricultural production in a more environmentally friendly way.

Policy Change Through Negotiated Agreements: The Case of Greening Swiss Agricultural Policy

Negotiated agreements are a promising pathway for policy change. This paper revisits and extends characteristics of negotiated agreements using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. We focus on two characteristics of negotiated agreements that previous literature has not explicitly addressed. First, we scrutinize the role of policy core and secondary policy beliefs in actor constellations. Secondly, we address partial success, that is, the notion that actors concede on some points, but in return succeed in others. We investigate these two characteristics in the 2014 reform of Swiss agricultural policy. Based on cluster and social network analysis, we exemplify how negotiated agreements embedded in a participatory policy process lead to a surprising level of policy change by promoting agricultural production practices with an intended positive effect on the environment. We show that rather than coalitions based on policy core beliefs, the formation of groups of actors based on secondary beliefs who span across the coalitions formed the basis for a negotiated agreement. Green and conservative groups were both able to achieve partial success. We conclude that insights from this exemplary case study should revive the concept and initialize a research agenda on negotiated agreements as a pathway for change in domestic policymaking.

External Costs of Agriculture Derived from Payments for Agri-Environment Measures: Framework and Application to Switzerland

The costs of unintended side effects of agriculture such as water pollution cannot be directly observed in markets. However, the values society places on healthy agricultural environments are increasingly reflected in payments to farmers for measures to avoid or reduce environmental damage. This paper presents a framework for estimating external costs of agriculture from payment rates of agri-environment measures addressing specific externality issues. The framework is applied to the broad range of agri-environment measures implemented in Swiss agricultural policy. Estimates of external costs are derived for emissions of greenhouse gases, ammonia, nitrate and pesticides, soil erosion, habitat deficits, and animal suffering. The total external costs of Swiss agriculture are estimated at CHF 3.651 billion (CHF 3494 per hectare) when the calculations are based on the agri-environment measures’ average avoidance costs and of CHF 5.560 billion (CHF 5321 per hectare) when the calculations are based on highest observed avoidance costs. Potential applications include internalization policies, evaluations of agri-environment support, and integrated environmental and economic accounting.

Motivations for swiss lowland farmers to conserve biodiversity: Identifying factors to predict proportions of implemented ecological compensation areas

The global loss of biodiversity is one of the major environmental threats of our time (Rockstrom et al., 2009) and agriculture is one of the main drivers of the global biodiversity decline (Benton, 2007; Kleijn et al., 2009; Pereira et al., 2010). Agricultural landscapes were formerly rich in biodiversity, which has been attributed to mosaic style landscapes and low-intensity production systems that provided a wide variety of interlinked habitats (Edwards et al., 1999). Economic pressure has led to declining species richness as agricultural production has become more intensive (Robinson and Sutherland, 2002), with an associated reduction of habitat-providing landscape elements (Billeter et al., 2008). Despite the objective of promoting biodiversity, which has been included in Swiss agricultural policy since 1990, many of the threatened species continue to decline (Lachat et al., 2010).Due to the large proportion of farmed land, the behavior and the decision-making of farmers in respect to conservation and sustainability issues have an extraordinary influence on biodiversity (Lokhorst et al., 2011; Stoeckli et al., 2017). Rands et al. (2010) argue that, if biodiversity decline is to be halted, biodiversity must be viewed as a public good and this view must be integrated into policy. Encouraging farmers to preserve or enhance biodiversity is often achieved through agri environmental schemes that provide financial rewards to enhance biodiversity (Burton and Paragahawewa, 2011). Most agri-environmental schemes are based around principles in which subsidies, or compensation payments, are linked to the farmer's compliance with a set of environmental measures, with subsidies paid in exchange for proof of ecological performance (PEP) (Kleijn and Sutherland, 2003).

Summer Farms in Switzerland: Profitability and Public Financial Support

Summer farms are seasonal enterprises in high-elevation mountain regions, established for and highly specialized in grazing ruminants. This article synthesizes studies by the Swiss AlpFUTUR research program on the profitability of and public financial support for summer farms. It highlights current challenges of Swiss pastoralism and makes recommendations for future reforms. Profitability hinges on the size of the summer farms as well as on their ability to create value added. Particularly for smaller summer farms, key value-added strategies appear to be innovative cheese production and effective direct marketing. Public financial support is substantial, and the underlying agri-environmental scheme is relatively sophisticated. Eligibility for public support is based on both action-oriented and results-oriented criteria. Direct payments consider not only the number of livestock but also the duration of their presence on the summer pastures. For each summer farm, a stocking target is defined based on the pasture's carrying capacity. However, this target does not take into account the wide variation in forage needs between different meat and milk production systems. During the last decade, there has been a decline in the number of cattle sent to summer farms. Understocking is widespread, and the abandonment of marginal pastures has increased, resulting in scrub encroachment. The remaining cattle tend to be concentrated on more productive surfaces to reduce management costs; this causes overgrazing. More attention should therefore be given to the accurate enforcement of agri-environmental standards and to regional-level agreement on which surfaces should be abandoned. Supporting traditional pastoral practices remains an explicit objective of Swiss agricultural policy. Recently introduced agri-environmental payment schemes promoting biodiversity conservation can complement the summer farm subsidies. However, implementation costs are likely to increase.

Interaction effects of targeted agri-environmental payments on non-marketed goods and services under climate change in a mountain region

Targeting of agri-environmental measures (AEMs) is a key to increasing the cost-effectiveness of governmental support for biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services from agriculture. Existing literature, however, often focuses on single measures without considering that policies are usually bundles of different measures addressing multiple non-marketed goods and services. Thus, interaction effects of a set of policies in a given policy mix may influence the cost-effectiveness of single measures. Recently, Swiss agricultural policy was redesigned using the Tinbergen rule as its basis, i.e., a single measure for each policy goal, including additional targeted direct payments. This facilitates testing for interaction effects of multiple targeted AEMs. Here we use a social-ecological, agent-based modelling framework to assess interaction effects of these agricultural policies while accounting for climate change impacts in our analysis. The results from our case study in a mountain region show that ecosystem service provision increases with targeted payments. However, interaction effects of the different targeted policies affect the provision levels of all goods and services. In particular, changes at the extensive margin, i.e., the total amount of land that is under production, largely determine the amount of ecosystem services provided. Thus, climate change driven productivity increases and policies that keep land in production may substantially support the provision of non-marketed goods and services in marginal agricultural production regions with a high potential for land abandonment. Consequently, the effectiveness of targeted policy measures should also consider changes at the extensive margin and be assessed in the context of bundles or portfolios of different policy measures.

Seasonality, diversity and aesthetic valuation of landscape plots: An integrative approach to assess landscape quality on different scales

The amenity function of landscapes is of growing importance in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union as well as in the reformed direct payment system of Swiss agricultural policy. This is reflected in a growing amount of direct payments for landscape stewardship, which enhances the need for landscape quality assessments. A good assessment system should be based on sound indicators applicable on different scales.Diversity indices are often used to evaluate landscape quality. However, the aspect of seasonality is often neglected, although it is a typical quality of landscapes in temperate zones. This paper aims at including the aesthetic valuation (measured as rating scores) and seasonality, as a substitute for quality in a diversity index.Overall, 27 landscape plots of 1km2 size with mapped land-use types were used to calculate diversity indices in two different ways: firstly by using the accumulated area of each landscape element (area-based approach) or the number of landscape elements (number-based approach) per plot, both times weighted by rating scores. Secondly with a “simplified element list” where only the landscape elements with a rating score above the mean of all rating scores were considered as single elements, while the remaining elements were aggregated to one element after weighting their area by the rating score. Furthermore for all types of calculation the accumulated absolute seasonal diversity was calculated.Plotting the accumulated absolute seasonal diversity on the x-axis against the mean diversity index values revealed, that only using the “simplified element list” can mitigate the effect of diversity index calculations where an increasing number of elements in a certain area automatically results in increasing diversity values, irrespective of their impact on aesthetic quality. This presentation in a x–y plot offers information to interpret the results, and can be applied in national and international monitoring systems.This novel approach is limited due to its restriction on 27 landscape plots of 1km2 size and to the lack of seasonal rating scores for all landscape elements that can be found in Switzerland. Additional data have thus to be provided. However, this should hardly be extra work in assessment projects if the number of fields and area sizes for each element can be taken from farm databases.

The distributional effects of agricultural policy reforms in Switzerland

This paper analyses the effects of Swiss agricultural policy reforms and the effects of farm income, off-farm income and direct payments on the distribution of the farm household income. To this end, the farm-level income records from the FADN data for the period 1990–2009 are used to calculate Gini coefficients and Gini elasticities. Bootstrap sampling procedures are applied to test for significant differences of the estimated parameters over time. The Gini coefficients estimated in our analysis show that the household income inequality in Swiss agriculture only slightly increased from 0.21 to 0.24, but the farm income inequality strongly increased from 0.27 to 0.38 in the considered period. We find furthermore that increasing off-farm incomes and direct payments would decrease the household income inequality. Especially direct payments that support farmers producing under adverse production conditions in the hill and mountain regions have found to be well targeted and thus contribute to the reductions in income inequality in agriculture.  

The influence of direct payments on farmers’ hail insurance decisions

AbstractWe analyze determinants of hail insurance use of Swiss farmers, using FADN panel data covering the period 1990–2009. Mixed effect logistic regression models are estimated to identify the most important farm and farmer characteristics that trigger insurance use. In addition, information on local hail risk is taken into account in these models. It shows that larger farms, with specialization in crop production, and with larger local hail risks are more likely to adopt the hail insurance. Moreover, insurance users are usually older and better educated. Since the early 1990s, Swiss agricultural policy has reduced price support and introduced general and ecological direct payments. This has led to a much higher importance of direct payments for farmers’ incomes. Our analysis shows that this development has contributed to decreasing hail insurance adoption rates in Switzerland over the period considered. Our results indicate that the larger the share of direct payments for total farm revenue, the less attractive is insurance as a risk management strategy for farmers. This interdependency should be explicitly considered by agricultural policy in the design of support mechanisms.

On the link between economic and environmental performance of Swiss dairy farms of the alpine area

Promoting the economic and environmental performance of Swiss farms is a major objective of Swiss agricultural policy. In the present paper, we investigate the relationship between the economic and global environmental performance of the Swiss dairy farms in the alpine area. The analysis relies on a sample of 56 dairy farms from the Farm Accountancy Data Network, for which highly precise and comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments have been carried out. The work income per family work unit is used as indicator of the economic performance of a farm. The so-called global environmental performance of a farm is, for its part, measured by means of an eco-efficiency indicator for each environmental impact considered (demand for non-renewable energy resources, eutrophication potential, aquatic ecotoxicity potential, human toxicity potential and land use) and of an aggregate eco-efficiency indicator assessed using a Data Envelopment Analysis-based approach. The relationship between economic and global environmental performance is assessed by means of non-parametric Spearman’s rank correlation analysis. The results of the analysis reveal the existence of a positive relationship between economic and global environmental performance. This positive relationship exists for all environmental issues considered and thus also for the aggregate eco-efficiency indicator. Its strength, however, substantially varies from one issue to another. This study provides the evidence that there is no trade-off between economic and global environmental farm performance. When they improve their economic performance, farms also tend to improve their global environmental performance and vice versa. This finding is of central relevance for policy-makers as it should contribute to improving the acceptance among farmers of the environmental objectives of Swiss agricultural policy in terms of an increase in environmental resource use productivity. In this sense this work provides valuable insights into the sustainable performance of the Swiss dairy sector in the alpine area.

Environmental cross-compliance mitigates nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from Swiss agriculture

Abstract In 1993 the Swiss agricultural policy was revised with – amongst other goals – the objective of improving the environmental performance of agriculture. A voluntary agri-environmental scheme to promote integrated production (IP) was introduced. In 1999 the IP standards were integrated in cross compliance requirements and termed Proof of Ecological Performance (PEP). We evaluated the effectiveness of this policy in terms of reducing diffuse nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) pollution of ground and surface water. We combined monitoring schemes covering the reference period from before the introduction of IP/PEP (1990–1992) with the evaluation of cause/effect relationships in selected case-study areas. The evaluation showed an overall reduction of diffuse N and P pollution from agriculture even though some goals were not reached. Nitrate leaching declined, but only a 3–4 mg L−1 reduction was observed rather than the intended decrease of 5 mg L−1. The P pollution of surface waters from agriculture decreased by only 10–30% instead of 50%. The intended reduction of the nitrogen surplus of Swiss agriculture by 33% was not attained, but the P surplus of Swiss agriculture was more than halved. IP/PEP practices that improved N and P management included reduced N and P fertiliser inputs and pig and poultry feedstuffs with reduced N and P contents, both of which are a consequence of the requirement of equilibrated farm nutrient balances, as well as increased use of cover cropping and of conservation tillage systems.

Effect of ecological compensation areas on floristic and breeding bird diversity in Swiss agricultural landscapes

Abstract In the 1990s the Swiss agricultural policy was reformed and new environmental objectives were formulated. The aims of the reform were to halt the loss of agro-biodiversity and to enable the spread of endangered species. As a result, the utilised agricultural area (UAA) is now interspersed with low input ecological compensation areas (ECA), making up 13% of the UAA (extensified grassland 90,000 ha, traditional orchards 25,000 ha, hedgerows 3000 ha, other elements 23,000 ha). To assess whether ECA contribute to the enhancement of biodiversity, plant composition was recorded on 1914 ECA of the Swiss plateau and 1966 territories of 27 bird species, which typically breed in open and semi-open farmland, were mapped and related to ECA. Eighty-six percent of ECA litter meadows and 50% of ECA hedgerows were of good ecological quality and attracted wetland and hedgerow birds. Most ECA hay meadows and traditional orchards, on the other hand, still reflected their former intensive management with only 20 and 12%, respectively, being of good ecological quality. Hardly any benefits for grassland and orchard birds were observed. Ecological quality of ECA was generally higher in the bio-geographical region ‘Basin of Lake Geneva and Upper Rhine Valley’ than in the other two regions of the Swiss plateau and it was higher in the agricultural production zone ‘Pre-alpine Hills’ than in the ‘Lowland Zone’.

"Un homme doit prendre femme pour être paysan !" De la dualité de la paysanne

"A Man Needs a Wife to Run a Farm!" About the Duality of Farm Women. Family farms are the base of Swiss agriculture. They are operated by the farmer and his wife who are the farm's labour force. Nevertheless, in the Swiss statistics, farm women are, for the most part, absent. Only the responsibilities of the farmer as the farm manager are reflected on, farm women are considered housekeepers rather than professional farm workers. In reality, farm women do contribute a lot to the operation of the small-and middle-sized farms. If agricultural production requires, farm women have to be available at any time to participate in or take over responsibility for any kind of farm work. The new Swiss agricultural policy (Agriculture 2002) demands production diversification and complementary activities in Swiss agriculture. However, this also means new and different qualifications as well as a challenge for family farms in particular. And with that the role of farm women in the agricultural production process has to be reconsidered. Gender studies enable us to approach this new and challenging situation for farm women but also for family farms from different perspectives.

Swiss Agricultural Policy and the Environment: An Example for the Rest of Europe to Follow?

The independence of Switzerland from the EU has allowed the development of unilateral agri-environmental policies. Article 31b provides a comprehensive approach to ecological farming that now covers more than half of the farmed area of the country. It is a progressive direct payment system developedin full consultation with farmers and contrasts with environmental incorporation in the Common Agricultural Policy in a number of significant ways. Despite a number of modifications to the scheme in its initial implementation,it provides the foundation for a pervasive sustainable agriculture in combination with the production of high quality ecologically-based food products.

Regional Incidence of Agricultural Policy: The Case of Switzerland

Agricultural expenditure is one of the largest categories of spending in the Swiss federal budget. Yet little is known about the transfer volume and its spatial effects. In this article the regional monetary incidence of the federal agricultural policy, including both the performance and the financial side, is investigated. The calculations show that lowlands receive a much greater average transfer than the mountain areas, measured per farming unit or by agricultural worker. The relative burden of the financing is greater in mountain areas than in the lowlands. Examination of the distribution of the burden according to income groups reveals a regressive effect. The financing of the Swiss agricultural policy cannot be called a social policy—neither for Switzerland as a whole nor from a regional perspective.