Archive

Few market studies have been undertaken of Hérens cattle meat and its development potential. Our paper highlights a situation of high demand and insufficient supply. Nearly half the volume produced is used for home consumption by the farmers, or sold through direct sales, whilst our survey shows that consumer demand and willingness to pay are…

EUROCROP was a concerted action to develop a research strategy for European arable farming. Research institutes and various stakeholders drew up the main research priorities for individual arable crops and for six transversal elements: “farming systems”, “farm economics”, “outlets and markets”, “quality of agricultural products”, “environmental impacts” and “socio-economic issues”. The social relevance and priority…

Economies of scale can significantly improve the competitiveness of the Swiss agricultural sector. In order to understand the development behind the farm size structure, the underlying sub-processes of land transfers are examined in-depth. Each year, between 4 % and 5 % of the total utilised agricultural area are transferred due to the closing down or…

Since 2004, the number of organic farms has been declining steadily contrary to the positive trend in demand. Between 2005 and 2007, 263 or 4.1 percent of organic farms were lost. An analysis of data from the Federal Office for Agriculture’s Agricultural Policy Information System (AGIS) shows that 2.0 percent of the farms converted from…

The best 17 % of Swiss farms were able to match Baden-Württemberg in respect of total productivity; the proportion for net labour productivity was around one quarter. This is the result of a study aiming at determining the position of Swiss agriculture in an international comparison of productivity. As the climatic and topographic conditions of…

The development of prices for agricultural products over the past eight hundred years can be divided into four phases. The first three phases were characterised by periods of increase and decrease. Until the middle of the 19th century these fluctuations corresponded closely to the rise in population and the occurrence of wars and epidemics. The…

The use of wood fuel for heat generation has been increasing steadily in recent years. Wood-fired heating systems do not only make economic sense for woodland owners; more and more often non-woodland owners are having their heat supplied by wood-fired power stations. Three output categories of wood-fired system were compared: 20, 60 and 100 kilowatt…

Which factors and strategies are effective for economically sustainable apple farming? On this research question the Agroscope Changins-Wädenswil Research Station (ACW) has conducted a representative survey in co-operation with the Fruit Union Swiss (SOV). This article summarizes the results about the IP producers. Data analysis shows that commercialisation, production costs and apple orchard size are…

Experiences of the economic viability of herbicide tolerant crops (HT crops) were collected in a literature review from countries in which commercial cultivation is taking place. The results show that HT crops do not generally produce increased yields and no herbicide savings are effected in the long term. Economic benefits may be derived from the…