Swiss agriculture policy at a crossroads

Both proponents and opponents for the new Swiss agricultural policy (2014-2017) would like to remunerate persons who produce public goods such as the maintenance of the rural landscape. However in contrast to the position of the director of the Federal Office for Agriculture, WTI’s Christian Häberli emphasizes that such compensations should not only be limited to farmers’ purses. Häberli argues that public tendering for non-marketable goods, but also a liberalized market for tradable goods would decrease the enormous amount of surpluses that Swiss farmers currently produce.  

Read the public debate between Bernard Lehmann (guest speaker of a Brown Bag session in May 2012) and Christian Häberli in the French-speaking economic magazine BILAN.