landuse

The debate about land use is at the intersection of agriculture and urbanism. The discussion on selfsufficency has a strong impact on production, but also on consuming areas, i.e. the city. The fear of not being able to feed ourselves led to the protection of the cultivated landscape. Which in turn is a trigger for the actual transformation - namely inward densification.

In 1959, the Swiss Farmers‘ Union demanded that the federal government drafted a constitutional article on agricultural zones in order that the farmers would be relieved of the pressure of permanently rising land prices. (1) In 1969 the people only narrowly accepted a constitutional article on spatial planning. In order to prevent excessive use of the land until the federal law was adopted and drafted, an urgent federal decree on measures in the field of spatial planning was enacted in March 1972. The Spatial Planning Act came into force in March 1972. It provided for a provisional zoning plan for the entire country. The motive was, in the words of Marius Baschung, the first director of the newly created Federal Office for Spatial Planning, to prevent a «Sauordnung», a mess. (2) However, it took another ten years for the Spatial Planning Act to come into force. The first version of the «law of the century» failed in 1976. Since 1980, the Spatial Planning Act (RPG) has obliged the cantons to separate building and non-building areas. They have to orientate the building zones to the demand of 15 years and use the land economically. (3) The revision of 2014 restricted the extensional zoning of building land and promoted «inward settlement development», while ensuring an appropriate quality of housing.» (4) New zoning of building land is not permitted until the cantons have revised their structure plans and reduced oversized building zones. (5) Sufficient areas of suitable arable land, in particular «Fruchtfolgeflächen», crop rotation areas, should be reserved for agriculture and a concept for nationwide soil mapping is developed. (6)

The production of food and land use practice are thus strongly linked. But how much land does the production of food really require? And where is this land located? The strong interconnectedness of the global food system does not allow any conclusive answers today. The example of imported cocoa products shows that the journey from the plate back to the origin is very opaque. Switzerland imports the largest quantity of cocoa products from Holland. Nevertheless, the understanding of global land consumption is essential. A holistic view of the land use question would be more important than ever before. Where we should consider the virtual land oversee land use as integral part of the national land use discussion. The commission of an economic, «haushälterisch», dealing with the land use, needs to be rethought by reflecting on the native significance of the term «oikonomia», which means taking care of the household; the resources and land that we inhabit. (4)

The per capita consumption of land seems to be a tool to visualize the problem more clearly. As WWF calculated the average German human requires roughly 3000 m2 agricultural land, compared with the global availability of only 2000 m2 per capita. Projecting this area of all Swiss people on real land gives us an idea of virtual land consumption. (7)

As Jane Hutton proposes in her book «Reciprocal Landscapes», the flow of resources has become central to the understanding of a place. (8) «The coffee was from Costa Rica, the flour that made up the bread probably from Canada, the oranges in the marmalade came from Spain, those in the Orange juice came from Morocco and the sugar came from Barbados. Then I think of all the things that went into making the production of those things possible – the machinery that came from West Germany, the fertilizer from the United States, the oil from Saudi Arabia.» (9) Following David Harvey instruction to trace back our breakfast reveals the significance of what we eat revealing one’s dependence upon yet obliviousness to the labor and environmental conditions of daily consumption. (8) The menu as a standardized combination of food is directly linked to land consumption.

By changing the habits of eating, the landscape, the whole material implications of the food systems will change. The daily meal ultimately defines the landscape around us. Meat production, but also animal products requires by far the majority of agricultural land. Even if the Swiss landscape is inconceivable without its cow the reduction of meat consumption is a crucial step to take in the next years. A change towards a dominant plant based nutrition is not only necessary but also possible, as studies by Agroscope Science showed. (10)

Contemporary attempts to implement these changes and roughly halve the land consumption of a Zurich citizen, established community supported agriculture systems, «Solawis». The proposal calculated an average agricultural land consumption of 1250 m2 per capita for a flexitarian and 950 m2 for a vegetarian diet. (11)

If we take the example further and apply the abstract areas to Zurich‘s agriculture within the proposed 50km radius, we also have to take into account the people who live there. The area that each of the 2 million people have that 800 m2 per person is quite scarce makes it clear that not only do we have to change our diet, but we also have to ask what is local or regional . As the journey of a local Swiss egg on the road shows, this is far from obvious.

(1) - Bridel, Laurent: "Raumplanung", in: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version vom 19.05.2011, übersetzt aus dem Französischen. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007844/2011-05-19/, visited 28.04.2021
(2) - Netzwerk Raumplaung Online: https://www.netzwerk-raumplanung.ch/raumplanung.html visited 28.04.2021
(3) - Schon die Pioniere warnten vor dem «Krebs der Verhüselung», SRF 2012 Online: https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/abstimmungen/raumplanungsgesetz/schon-die-pioniere-warnten-vor-dem-krebs-der-verhueselung, visited 28.04.2021
(4) - Bundesgesetz über die Raumplanung. Schweizerischer Bundesrat, vom 22. Juni 1979 (Stand am 1. Januar 2019) Online: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1979/1573_1573_1573/en visited 28.04.2021
(5) - Bundesgericht greift in der Raumplanung durch, NZZ 2019 https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/bundesgericht-greift-in-der-raumplanung-durch-ld.1455885?reduced=true, visited 28.04.2021
(6) - Sachplan Fruchtfolgeflächen SP FFF https://www.are.admin.ch/are/de/home/raumentwicklung-und-raumplanung/strategie-und-planung/konzepte-und-sachplaene/sachplaene-des-bundes/sachplan-fruchtfolgeflaechen-sp-fff.html visited 28.04.2021
(7) - Nahrungsmittelverbrauch und Fußabdrücke des Konsums in Deutschland, WWF, Online: https://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/Publikationen-PDF/WWF_Studie_Nahrungsmittelverbrauch_und_Fussabduecke_des_Konsums_in_Deutschland.pdf visited 28.04.2021
(8) - Hutton, Jane. Reciprocal Landscapes : Stories of Material Movements, London: Routledge, 2020. Print.
(9) - David Harvey, “Editorial: A Breakfast Vision,” Geographical Review 3, no. 1 (1989).
(10) - Ali Ferjani, Stefan Mann, Albert Zimmermann, (2018) "An evaluation of Swiss agriculture’s contribution to food security with decision support system for food security strategy", British Food Journal, https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-12-2017-0709
(11) - New Alliance, A proposal, https://newalliance.earth visited 28.04.2021

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1 - Bundesgesetz über die Raumplanung. Schweizerischer Bundesrat, vom 22. Juni 1979 (Stand am 1. Januar 2019) Online: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1979/1573_1573_1573/en visited 28.04.2021
2 - Area of overseas land required each year to supply Switzerland’s imports of forest and agricultural commodities (annual average 2015-19) WFF 2020, https://www.wwf.ch/sites/default/files/doc-2020-12/WWF_Risky_business_eng_1.pdf p.5
3 - BSV, based on Tonnen für die Tonne, WWF DE 2012, https://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/Publikationen-PDF/Landwirtschaft/studie_tonnen_fuer_die_tonne.pdf
4 - The microcenter in the urban neighborhood is linked to a land base (farm or cluster of farms) in the region., New Alliance, https://newalliance.earth/a_proposal.pdf p.8
5 - The microcenter in the urban neighborhood is linked to a land base (farm or cluster of farms) in the region., New Alliance, https://newalliance.earth/a_proposal.pdf p.8
6 - BSV, based on swissBOUNDARIES3D, Bundesamt für Landestopografie swisstopo https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/de/geodata/landscape/boundaries3d.html, Landw. Bewirtschaftung: Nutzungsflächen, Kanton Zürich, Geographisches Informationssystem GIS-ZH, 2021
7 - BSV, based on swissBOUNDARIES3D, Bundesamt für Landestopografie swisstopo, 2021 https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/de/geodata/landscape/boundaries3d.html