The water is running out. Farmers are particularly hard hit by this. Some cantons have now released more areas and want to prevent the lack of fodder. But the food is not the problem everywhere.
A piece of Switzerland: cows on an alp in the Haslital in the Bernese Oberland.
Because of the drought, the animals have less to eat on the pastures – and are already eating up the food reserves for the winter.
Some cantons are now reacting to the problem and are releasing more pastures for the animals. According to Florie Marion from the Federal Office for Agriculture, ten cantons have already taken immediate measures to relieve farms and save on feed reserves.
“The situation is particularly difficult in the Mittelland and in the Jura arc,” says Marion. On the karst soils in the Jura arc, drought makes itself felt very quickly because they store water poorly. The grass then no longer grows or it withers.
That is why the cantons of Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Jura decided on Monday that they would now also allow the animals in the valley to graze on pastures that would not normally have been released for this purpose at this time. An “emergency measure”, says the canton of Fribourg.
Biodiversity is not endangered
For reasons of biodiversity, so-called “extensively and little intensively used” meadows in the valley may only be released for livestock from September 1st – by then the biodiversity of plants and animals should spread there. This protection is now exceptionally lifted because of the drought.
No problem: biodiversity is not affected.
The canton of Neuchâtel justifies the step by saying that most of the “ecologically valuable plant species” have already completed their reproductive cycle due to the early season. Therefore, it does not harm the “wealth” if the animals are already grazing on these areas.
The Federal Office for Agriculture also sees no impairment in biodiversity. “The meadows, which can now be grazed early, were mowed later this year as required. This ensured the seeding of the plants and offered retreat opportunities for living beings,” says Marion.
From now on you will also see cows grazing along hedges or banks. Selina Droz from the Swiss Alpine Association runs a farm herself and thinks that the emergency measure doesn’t help much: “I can only speak for our farm in the Jura, but the extra grass is enough for two days and the cows don’t like it either, because it’s already like that old is.”
Second harvest is crucial
In 2018, the federal government already made such special measures possible. At that time, Switzerland was experiencing an exceptionally hot summer. After 2003 and 2015, it was the third warmest summer since records began.
It’s not as bad as 2018. This year, however, a number of heat records have already been broken. MeteoSwiss expects the heat to last well into August.
“It’s a preventive measure,” says Marion from the Federal Office for Agriculture. The first forage harvest was good. One could hardly keep up with the grazing.
The question that now arises is how the second harvest will turn out. “That’s why the food reserves for the winter must not be used up in the summer,” says Marion. Otherwise, without good harvests and without sufficient reserves, things would look bad in the winter.
The alternative would be to import feed. But even that is difficult at the moment. “It’s not just Switzerland that’s struggling with the drought, it’s the whole of Europe,” says Marion. If everyone runs out of feed at the same time, on the meadow or in the silo, the demand on the market increases – and with it the price.
Sandra Helfenstein from the Swiss Farmers’ Association, on the other hand, reassured: “It won’t get that far for Switzerland. We have enough hay.” She emphasizes that the situation in Switzerland is not the same everywhere.
Keeping the animals on the alp
In the Alps, for example, climate change is having a different effect. It’s not the food that’s missing there, it’s the springs that are drying up because there has been very little snowing and raining this year. And that is a problem for the care of the animals.
In Switzerland, an average of over 250,000 cattle and cows graze on the Swiss Alps for three and a half months in summer. A dairy cow needs to drink between 50 and 100 liters per day to produce 20 to 25 liters of milk per day.
It’s all about the milk: Whether the cows are doing well on the alp also has an impact on the dairy industry.
This means that the dairy industry is also involved. To save Swiss milk, the army in the canton of Obwalden made the first helicopter flights on Tuesdayto water the animals on the alp. It’s still an isolated case. In the hot summers of 2015 and 2018, the army also blew up water – including from a lake in France, which caused a stir in 2015.
The aim of this effort: to keep the animals on the alp for as long as possible. A premature departure from the pastures would mean that the meadows in the valley would be emptied earlier and, as a result, the fodder reserves would be used up earlier.
Which brings us back to the beginning: importing feed, reducing herds, slaughtering animals. But Helfenstein from the Swiss Farmers’ Union says: “So far I don’t know of any cases where the animals really came back to the valley.”
Affected areas invest in infrastructure
Lessons learned after the hot summer of 2018. Since then, the canton of Friborg has been supporting water supply and irrigation projects, as it writes in its statement on Monday.
Selina Droz from the Swiss Alpine Association also says: “A lot was invested in infrastructure projects – the cisterns were enlarged, the companies were connected to the drinking water supply and many community projects were founded.”
A lot has happened, especially in the affected areas. Still wasn’t it enough? “It’s bad in the Jura, yes. And not just since 2018, but since 2014,” says Droz. “But alpine farming could be an opportunity there. If the farms would send their herds from the Jura to the Alps in summer, they could save feed.»
Droz, herself a farmer in the Jura, says that some farms in her area are reconsidering moving to the Alps.