Trouble across the border Swiss farmers buy farmland from Germans
Swiss farmers use an old agreement to buy land in Baden-Württemberg cheaply and import the harvest into Switzerland duty-free. German farmers in the region feel they are being cheated.
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- Swiss farmers can buy or lease land in Germany comparatively cheaply.
- They can import the products into Switzerland duty-free if they are grown no more than ten kilometers from the border.
- This annoys German farmers. Although they are allowed to do exactly the same, the economic situation means that the regulation is of no benefit to them. They feel they are being taken advantage of.
A regulation has been causing trouble among neighbors along Baden-Württemberg's southern border for decades. More precisely: since 2002, when the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons was introduced, which allows Swiss people to purchase land in Germany.
Since then, Swiss farmers have bought or leased thousands of hectares of farmland on the German side and cultivate it. They are able to pay higher rents and land prices, thereby squeezing out German farmers.
A customs agreement from 1958, which regulates border and transit traffic, also allows them to import their agricultural produce grown on the German side within a 10-kilometer strip of the border into Switzerland duty-free. Swiss farmers can then sell their potatoes grown in Germany as "Schweizer Härdöpfel" at the higher producer prices customary in Switzerland.
Conversely, German farmers are also allowed to grow potatoes in Switzerland and import them duty-free into Germany. However, as cereals and vegetables can be sold at a higher price in Switzerland than in Germany, their German colleagues gain nothing from this. On top of this, the Swiss receive financial aid from the EU, even though Switzerland is not part of the EU.
The anger of German farmers is enormous
It's no wonder that German farmers feel cheated, not to mention furious. "It really annoys me when I hear how Swiss farmers are helping themselves here," organic farmer Oswald Tröndle toldDie Zeit. More than 5700 hectares of German land from Basel to Lake Constance are plowed by Swiss farmers, writes the weekly newspaper.
Since 2009, agricultural land within the ten-kilometer border zone in Baden-Württemberg may not be sold for more than 120 percent of the usual local price. But in practice, the law "unfortunately does not work as hoped", writes the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Agriculture. German organic farmer Tröndle has an explanation for this: "German landowners sell to the Swiss because they pay more for it."
"The Germans would do exactly the same"
"Every contract always needs two signatures. The Germans are selling their land to us voluntarily," says Christoph Graf, President of the Schaffhausen Farmers' Association, toBlick. In fact, every fourth farmer in the canton of Schaffhausen owns a more or less large piece of land on the German side of the border.
"If the economic situation were reversed, the Germans would do exactly the same," Graf points out. But of course he understands the demand for import duties. "If the Germans were to buy up our land, we wouldn't be happy either and would probably have the same concerns."
