Alpine farming

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An important piece of Swiss culture

Summer is a busy time on Swiss farms: our farmers can be found collecting grain from the fields, picking fruit and harvesting vegetables. And they also make hay for their cattle in the winter. In the warmer months of the year, in contrast, many take their animals up to Alpine meadows. Some 20% of cattle spend their summer at altitude on one of the more than 6,000 summer pasture holdings. More than a third of Switzerland’s agricultural land is accounted for by alpine pastures. They can be found in Graubünden, Valais, Bern and Central Switzerland.

Image: LID

Hand in hand with tourism

Without farming families, our mountain regions would look very different from what we are used to seeing when hiking. Centuries of use of these areas with grazing cattle have created alpine meadows. Cows, sheep, goats and horses can be found on the meadows, grazing on fresh herbs and grass and maintaining the open spaces in the process. They even eat tender shoots from shrubs and bushes. Where the bushes do manage to get the upper hand, however, the farming families can intervene with targeted pruning. It is only by keeping the alpine meadows open that recreational athletes and tourists can enjoy nature at these altitudes.

Tradition that breathes

The annual procession up to the alpine pastures that takes place each spring is a special time for Alpine dairymen and dairymaids. Together with their animals, they move up to higher altitudes where they will spend the entire summer. This event is a highlight of the year for many Alpine families. Over the months ahead, their lives are characterised by hard work and living together with their cattle. Their joy is thus all the greater when in autumn they return with their decorated cows down to lower ground in the valley where they are welcomed by the local residents. In many places, you can also observe this spectacle and perhaps even try a piece of the local region’s alp cheese at one of the markets.

Image: LID

Special herbs for a special flavour

Speaking of alp cheese: unlike other mountain cheese, which is made all year round in mountainous regions, it is only produced during the summer with milk from the animals that graze on the alpine meadows. The many different herbs, the crystal-clear water and the pure mountain air give the alp cheese its special flavour. And this speciality is set to become even more special in the future: there are now an increasing number of alpine meadows that are home to suckler cows and fewer that are inhabited by dairy cows. This is related to the trend in the valley area. Over the past 20 years, a consistent decline in the number of alpine meadows with sheep has also been observed, with the number of goats increasing in return. This, on the other hand, is related to the wolf, which makes keeping sheep a more costly endeavour. Pigs are also kept at many milk-producing alpine pastures. They are fed with the whey produced here and slaughtered at the end of the alpine grazing period.

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