Beyond Family Succession in Swiss Agriculture: Agroecological Experiments and the Contradictions of an “Ecologised Industrial Farming Model”
Although there is a growing global consensus on the limitations of the industrial agri-food model, agricultural policies continue to sustain a persistent tension between food production and ecological concerns, often perceived as contradictory. We examine this tension through the case of Switzerland...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/vertigo, |
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| Auteurs principaux: | , |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Publié: |
VertigO
2026
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| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Although there is a growing global consensus on the limitations of the industrial agri-food model, agricultural policies continue to sustain a persistent tension between food production and ecological concerns, often perceived as contradictory. We examine this tension through the case of Switzerland, where the image of a sustainable agriculture that integrates economic, ecological, and social dimensions endures, continuing a historical narrative of Switzerland as an ecologised industrial model. Based on ethnographic research with farmers who did not inherit a family farm and move beyond the production-ecology dualism through the implementation of agroecological practices, we identify three levels of rupture with the dominant model promoted by Swiss agricultural polices: the plot, the farm, and the territory. Through three case studies, we highlight the lived realities of these farms caught between endured marginality and chosen alternativity. This analysis reveals the diversity of ways in which these farmers perceive and position themselves on the margins, in resistance, or in processes of territorial integration. We argue that although Swiss agricultural policies pursue an improvement of the sector’s ecological performance, a dynamic we describe as agroecology in the weak sense, they hinder the establishment of farms outside the family heritage framework – and thereby the generational renewal – as well as the experimentation and the advent of agroecology in the strong sense. |
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