Agriculture in Switzerland, one of the economic sectors of the country, has developed since the 6th millennium BC and was the principal activity and first source of income until the 19th century. Framework of rural society, agriculture has as main factors the natural conditions (climate), the demographic evolution and agrarian structures (institutional and legal norms). In Switzerland, it has become much diversified, despite the small size of the territory, owing to the geographical diversity of the country.
The impacts of agriculture in Switzerland are not only economic. The agricultural sector uses around half of the surface area of the country and contributes in the shaping the Swiss landscape. Swiss farmers also produce more than half of the food consumed in Switzerland, thereby helping to safeguard national food security and culinary traditions.
History
Prehistory
In Switzerland, the processes of establishment of the Neolithic economy, of which agriculture is only one of the components, although essential, seem to begin around 5500 BC. The disparities in the archaeological documentation do not allow a model that traces the transition of societies from the last hunters (stage of predation) to those of the first Neolithic farmers (stage of agro-pastoral production); only the coexistence of the two groups seems assured within a primary deciduous forest, still little modified by anthropic action. In the regions of Basel and Zürich, clearing, food crops of emmer, einkorn and peas, textile crops of flax, poppy are attested from the early Neolithic; in Valais and Ticino, an advanced Neolithic economy seems to have been put in place rapidly. The practices of agriculture in the narrow sense of the term (open land) and animal husbandry, the manufacture of polished stone tools, ceramics and millstones are directly associated in the Early Neolithic sites.
From the Middle Neolithic (4900 to 3200 BC approximately), with the installation of coastal settlements, the occupation and exploitation of the land intensified as the population grew. The fields are probably cultivated for a few years in a row with a succession of different plants (wheat is predominant on the Plateau) cultivated alternately with a long fallow period. From the fallow land, a secondary forest of hazelnut or birch trees quickly re-establishes itself; it easily provides man with lumber or firewood, as well as the products of the gathering (hazelnuts and apples). This agrarian system, well adapted to the still predominant forest domain (beech forest - fir forest), allows good soil regeneration. The areas cleared as and when required, probably by fire, are still modest. In the recent and final Neolithic (3200 to 2200 approximately), their proportion increases. The fallow period is reduced and larger areas are exploited around the villages. The intensification of agricultural practices is contemporaneous with the population growth admitted for this period.
The Bronze Age (2200 to 750-700 BC approximately) saw the completion of the shaping of the landscape by the farmer. In the Late Bronze Age, on the Plateau, towards Lake Constance for example, it is already similar to that of the Middle Ages, where cultivated fields and meadows rub shoulders with plots of managed forest. In the Jura, the first traces of clearing date back to the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Barley becomes the predominant cereal, followed by spelt. Millets make their appearance, the share of legumes (beans, lentils, peas) becomes more important. Flax and poppy are still cultivated, while camelina are introduced. The very large number of meadow and pasture plants speaks in favor of the increase of these biotopes at least from the Late Bronze Age. In the Alpine valleys, the human impact near the edge of the forest is accentuated in the Bronze Age, but nothing is known about the practices of cattle summering before the Middle Ages. For the whole of the Bronze Age, the farming system of the land was of the agro-pastoral type with crop rotation and intercalation of short and probably grazed fallows. The soil is worked using plows pulled by oxen as shown in the rock carvings of Val Camonica (Italian Alps). Summer crops (millet and legumes) and winter crops (spelt) are now well documented. The seconds have an early ripening and higher yield.
The transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age is around 800-750 BC approximately and coincides with a phase of climatic deterioration spread over a hundred years (civilization of Hallstatt, civilization of La Tène). During the Iron Age (until around 50 BC), the intensity of clearing increased. The deployment of oak and beech is probably the reflection of their exploitation for the harvest of acorns and beechnuts. Hornbeam, a newcomer, provides the wood needed for metallurgy. The spectrum of plants cultivated in the Iron Age is not very different from that of the Bronze Age, except for the appearance of oats. The greatest innovations are to be found at the level of agricultural techniques: iron craftsmanship allows a greater diversification of tools. The plows are improving. Crop rotation with intercalations of short fallows is still attested. The use of manure also seems proven. Grassland management is changing from extensive management of wooded pastures to the mowing of meadows, which are also used as pastures. The hay harvest can be linked to the appearance of stabling in stable houses. It is known that the Helvetii exported not only cheese and cattle, but also cereals, which shows that their agriculture was no longer purely subsistence.
Roman era
In Roman times (50 BC to 400 AD), the main innovations were the simultaneous appearance of walnut and chestnut plantations, the introduction of crops of hemp and rye (still rare) and probably vines (viticulture). Aside from the extension of cultivated fields, meadows and wooded pastures, there is no real break in the development of vegetation between the Iron Age and Roman times, which probably reflects a permanent agro-pastoral practices. On the Plateau, the dominant cereal is spelt. The crops of textile and oilseed plants are diversified: flax, hemp, poppy and camelina. Vegetables, spices, medicinal plants and fruit trees, including the newly arrived peach tree, are maintained in gardens, fields or orchards close to the habitat (villa). A major change in the evolution of the plant cover is not detected before the year 1000, which pleads in favor of continuity between the Roman period and the High Middle Ages.
Middle Ages For the High Middle Ages, many questions still remain open, given the almost complete silence of written sources related to landed seignory and the scarcity of archaeological research devoted to rural areas. Several peasant settlements are attested on the site of ancient Roman villas (Munzach, Dietikon, Vicques). As the legal sources use a detailed vocabulary for cattle and pigs, the majority of historians admit that breeding had a greater weight than it will have in the following centuries, but there was no specialization yet, as the breeders also practiced plowing around their farms, extensively and individually. The domanial regime was found above all in ecclesiastical seignories (Abbey of St. Gallen), as some period documents suggest.
From the 9th to the 12th century, the growth of the population led to the growth of cultivated areas. How did animal husbandry evolve? This question, made difficult by the extreme scarcity of sources, is controversial. Clearing culminated in the 12th-13th centuries. To feed a growing population, cereal growing was intensified on the Plateau, on the one hand by converting meadows into fields and by reducing the herd (especially small cattle, goats and sheep), on the other hand by improving yields by the transition to compulsory municipal rotation (village) and by technical progress such as the introduction of the plough. This development did not affect the high altitude areas, which were not very favorable to cereals; In the Alps and especially in the Pre-Alps, there was a specialization in animal husbandry from the 14th century onwards, under the influence (at least in central Switzerland) of ruling families who increasingly oriented themselves towards the urban markets of Northern Italy (cattle trade). Specialization made the peasants of the late Middle Ages dependent on the agricultural market not only for the sale of their products, but also for their supply. It favored regionalization on a large or small scale, for example in eastern Switzerland: vineyards in the Rhine valley, livestock in Appenzell, cereals on the Plateau. This leads to a division of labor between various agrarian zones.
The cities had a great influence on the evolution of agriculture from the 13th century at least. Disengaging from the pure subsistence economy, peasants belonging to the elite, began to sell their surpluses on the urban markets. As for the bourgeois, they invested in the lands close to their city to produce easy-to-sell goods there: wine, meat, vegetables, fruit, flax, hemp and tinctorial plants. Agriculture also suffered the shock of the processes described under the name of the crisis of the late Middle Ages: for example, ownership structures modified by demographic evolution, vagaries of agricultural prices, rationalization and reorientation of social relations and dependencies.
The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern era is characterized by a significant climate cooling, the Little Ice Age. Switzerland and a large part of Europe experienced at that time a greater frequency of cold and dry winters and springs with a tendency to wind, which is confirmed by historical research on the effects of climate: cereal crops, viticulture and dairy production all suffered from the spring cold (especially in April), generally followed by whole weeks of precipitation during the summer. In the phases of progression of the glaciers, more particularly between 1570 and 1630, the bad harvests due to the climate caused frequent high prices.
Modern era
Despite the proto-industrialization that began in the late 16th century, the agricultural sector remained by far the most important branch of the Swiss economy throughout the early modern period. Although there is a lack of statistical data of sufficient quality, this seems to apply to all relevant variables: the capital stock, investments, quantity and value of production and finally also the number of people employed in agriculture. The vast majority of the population lived in and from agriculture, which until the 19th century was largely based on the regionally available resources.
The agricultural sector therefore made a significant contribution to financing the public budget. On the wheat lands of the Plateau, it was subject to the constraints of crop rotation, feudal dues and the authority of the towns of which the peasants were the subjects. Communal regulations, very different from one area to another, determined the daily life of producers. In particular, they contained provisions on collective rights of use and on access to commons, they set local rules in terms of land transfers, access to the bourgeoisie, public assistance and the procedure to be followed in the event of social conflict. But all of this was taking place in a legally, politically and socially unequal society.