8758: Country Report on Organic Farming Research in Switzerland

Alföldi, Thomas; Niggli, Urs; Willer, Helga; Fried, Padruot M.; Strasser, Freddie; Dubois, David; Baumann, Daniel; Kaufmann, Robert; Gallmann, Peter and Charles, Raphael (2006) Country Report on Organic Farming Research in Switzerland, in Lange, Stefan; Williges, Ute; Saxena, Shilpi and Willer, Helga, Eds. European Research in Organic Food and Farming. Reports on organisation and conduction of research programmes in 11 European countries, page pp. 249-266. Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernähung (BLE) / Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food BLE, Bonn, Germany.

Full text available as: PDF (Country Report Switzerland) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 4: Research facilities of Agroscope Zurich-Reckenholz (ART Reckenholz)) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 5: Research facilities of Agroscope Wädenswil (ACW Wädenswil)) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 6: Research facilities of Agroscope Liebfeld-Posieux (ALP)) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 7: Research facilities of Agroscope Tänikon (ART Tänikon)) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 8: Research facilities of Agroscope Changins (ACW Changins)) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Table 9: Research facilities of FiBL) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer. PDF (Estimate of actual spending on organic farming research) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

Summary

The report presents the current (2005) status of organic farming resarch in Switzerland.
Switzerland has a long history of organic farming research, which in its beginnings has been carried out by organic farming pioneers and by private institutions like the Goetheanum, Möschberg Centre and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). It was in the 1990s, when Swiss Federal Agricultural Research Stations (Agroscope) became also involved in organic research topics.
It can be estimated that currently approximately € 7.5 million per annum are allocated very specifically to organic farming research from public budgets.
The National Research Programme is organised according to a four-year research concept of the Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture (FOAG). Within this concept, organic farming is considered as an important issue of Swiss agricultural research, and research for organic farming is carried out as a continuous process. The Research Institute of Organic Farming (FiBL) is doing research exclusively for organic farming, whereas at the Federal Agricultural Research Stations research for integrated and organic farming is carried out in parallel. Together with the activities of FiBL, all relevant agricultural topics such as plant production, animal health and husbandry, food quality and socioeconomics are covered and carried out in the context of organic farming. Research is
organised as
a) A mandate of € 3.5 Mio annually to FiBL (the so-called “Leistungsauftrag” by the Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture (FOAG) and the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office (SFVO) and
b) As a priority setting within the three Federal Agroscope Centres.

Additional Summary

This paper one of the country reports produced as part of the ERA Net scheme Core Organic. This reports are available as a book and can be ordered from BLE at geschaeftsstelle-oekolandbau @ ble.de.
An internet version is available at the Core Organic Web protal at www.coreorganic.org

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