Resilience of Swiss summer farms: An interdisciplinary analysis of key challenges and adaptations

CONTEXT

Summer farms in Switzerland provide a broad bundle of ecosystem services to society: they produce ruminant-based food, provide areas of recreation and biodiversity conservation, and are an important part of mountain cultural heritage and tourism. However, the activity of these farms is declining, with mostly negative implications for the services they provide.

OBJECTIVE

To preserve the remaining summer farms, it is crucial to understand the factors that make them resilient. In this study, we therefore analysed the resilience of Swiss summer farming systems by identifying key challenges, describing supply of private and public goods as well as functions, and highlighting factors that enhance or decrease resilience.

METHODS

We used an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from agronomy, ecology, economics, sociology, livestock, and food science. We described the particularities of this farming system, characterised the challenges that farms face, and analysed the provision of selected private and public goods as well as functions. For this, we used remote sensing and farm census data, interviews, and survey questionnaires.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Key challenges to resilience include labour constraints, climate change-induced water scarcity, and human-wolf conflicts. Despite these challenges, the production of cheese, the main product of most farms, has been resilient. Further, overall livestock stocking remained stable due to system reserves from direct payments, and summer farms continued to be important for tourism in rural areas. As an adaptation strategy to mounting labour shortages, summer farms increasingly kept suckler cows, which demanded less labour. Labour shortage was both a result of and further reinforced by employees spending fewer seasons on summer farms due to the job's seasonality. Both labour shortage and reduced grazing pressure contributed to a loss of 10 % of summer farming area to shrub and woody plant encroachment and forest succession, which indicated a substantial lack of landscape maintenance as a public good. We emphasize the need for a more flexible direct payment system, as well as digital and silvo-pastoral innovations, to enhance system adaptability and improve resilience.

SIGNIFICANCE

This study is the first to analyse Swiss summer farm resilience and highlights a lack of landscape maintenance, due to shrub encroachment. The findings underscore the need for flexible direct payment systems and innovations such as digital tools and silvo-pastoral practices to enhance system adaptability and resilience.