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.