More Entrepreneurs, Fewer State Farmers: Guy Parmelin’s Agricultural Reform Stops Halfway

Guy Parmelin is asking Swiss farmers to develop more of an “SME spirit” while leaving them inside one of the country’s most tightly controlled economic sectors. Agriculture receives billions in direct payments, enjoys high tariffs against foreign competition and operates under detailed rules governing how land must be farmed.

The new AP30+ policy promises more freedom and less paperwork. One proposed change would no longer require farmers to document every prescribed measure taken for animal welfare and environmental protection. Instead, payments would depend on whether farms achieve predefined results. Farmers would largely decide how to reach those targets.

That approach has an obvious logic, the commentary argues. Farmers know their soil, animals and businesses better than officials in Bern. If they can deliver an environmental benefit more cheaply or intelligently than the method imposed by the state, they should gain from doing so.

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SME spirit

But Parmelin is following a path already taken by his predecessor, Johann Schneider-Ammann. Schneider-Ammann also called for greater market orientation, responsibility and simplification. His effort to expose agriculture to more competition ran into parliamentary resistance, particularly from farming interests. The result was not a freer agricultural system, but one that ordered more services and created more rules in return.

Parmelin’s proposals contain promising elements, but the central contradiction remains. The government wants farmers to behave more like entrepreneurs while continuing to shield them from much of the market pressure that would make them entrepreneurs.

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More responsibility, trust and simplification