Jun 26, 8:09 PM
When Heat Meets Thin Margins: Fenaco’s Warning to Swiss Agriculture
The cooperative says weather shocks and geopolitical turmoil are eroding food security, while its own expansion is meant to buy resilience.
Swiss agriculture likes to present itself as sturdy, local and reassuringly well ordered. Then a heatwave arrives, supply chains wobble and the picture looks less like stability than habit dressed up as strategy. Fenaco chief Michael Feitknecht says the sector is now feeling the strain in full view: extreme heat is hitting harvests, and the country’s food self-sufficiency has fallen to around 42 percent, after being above 50 percent in recent years.
That is not a small correction. Feitknecht says yield security in Switzerland is declining sharply, with potatoes a telling example: the acreage is stable, but the harvest swings are becoming far more violent. For processors, that means uncertainty rather than planning, which is a poor basis for an industry that still likes to think of itself as predictable. Climate adaptation helps, he says, but only up to a point. Nature remains stubbornly unimpressed by management slogans.
The weather is only half the story. Geopolitical crises have also pushed energy volatility and fertiliser prices upward, and Fenaco expects that pressure to continue. The cooperative’s response is to become less dependent over time by investing in decentralised energy production, including photovoltaics, biogas and pellets. In other words: if the world insists on being unstable, at least try to buy some insulation.
Fenaco’s size attracts criticism, especially from former price watchdog Rudolf Strahm, who has described it as a state within a state. Feitknecht rejects the label and points out that Fenaco belongs to about 23,000 farmer members, roughly half of Swiss agricultural businesses. He also argues that the cooperative was built from an efficiency logic, because it has to deal with global suppliers far larger than itself and with powerful retailers on the other side.
That logic extends to growth. Fenaco says it needs a certain amount of expansion to keep investing, especially with a margin of only 1.5 percent, meaning 1.50 francs remain from every 100 francs in revenue. The cooperative has been taking over veterinary practices to secure services in rural areas, where succession problems are a growing concern, and it has also invested in the telecom company Quickline to help generate returns for future investment. Fenaco may not like being called a conglomerate, but it behaves like an organisation that knows thrift alone does not build infrastructure.
The broader point is uncomfortable for Switzerland. A rich country with a good education system and a functioning state can still find its food base thinning out when weather and geopolitics turn hostile. Fenaco’s message is not romantic, but it is clear: efficiency, capital and diversification now matter as much as farming itself. The rest is comforting self-image, and that has never fed anyone.
Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com
