Federal Act
on Agriculture
(Agriculture Act, AgricA)

The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall en­sure that, through sus­tain­able, mar­ket-ori­ent­ated pro­duc­tion, the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor makes a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards:

a.

the re­li­able pro­vi­sion of the pop­u­la­tion with food­stuffs;

b.

pre­serving nat­ur­al re­sources;

c.

the up­keep of the coun­tryside;

d.

en­cour­aging de­cent­ral­ised set­tle­ment;

e.⁴

guar­an­tee­ing an­im­al wel­fare.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall take meas­ures, in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

to cre­ate fa­vour­able con­di­tions for the pro­duc­tion and sale of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products;

b.⁵

to pay for pub­lic and eco­lo­gic­al ser­vices provided by farms through dir­ect sub­sidies;

b^bis.⁶ to pro­mote the sus­tain­able use of nat­ur­al re­sources and an­im­al and cli­mate friendly pro­duc­tion;

c.

to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of ag­ri­cul­ture in a so­cially ac­cept­able man­ner;

d.

to sup­port struc­tur­al im­prove­ments;

e.⁷

to pro­mote ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search and ad­vis­ory ser­vices as well as plant and an­im­al breed­ing;

f.

to reg­u­late plant pro­tec­tion and the use of aids to pro­duc­tion⁸.

² These fed­er­al meas­ures are con­di­tion­al on a reas­on­able de­gree of self-help and are co­ordin­ated with re­gion­al policy in­stru­ments.

³ They sup­port a joint strategy for qual­ity in ag­ri­cul­ture and the food in­dustry.⁹

⁴ They are based on the prin­ciple of self-suf­fi­ciency with re­gard to food, tak­ing in­to ac­count con­sumers’ needs for high-qual­ity, var­ied and sus­tain­able do­mest­ic products.¹⁰

⁵ Sup­port meas­ures that are likely to dis­tort com­pet­i­tion to the det­ri­ment of trade and in­dustry are ex­cluded. Pro­ced­ures are gov­erned by Art­icle 89a. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails.¹¹

¹ The term ag­ri­cul­ture in­cludes:

a.

products from ar­able and live­stock farm­ing;

b.

the pre­par­a­tion, stor­age and sale of the cor­res­pond­ing products on the farm;

c.

the man­age­ment of areas of near-nat­ur­al land.

^1bis The meas­ures in Parts 5 and 6 ap­ply to ag­ri­cul­tur­al activ­it­ies. They are con­di­tion­al on an activ­ity in line with the prin­ciple of para­graph 1, let­ters a–c.¹²

² The meas­ures in Part 2 Chapter 1 and those in­dic­ated in Parts 5 to 7 ap­ply to hor­ti­cul­tur­al busi­nesses.¹³

³ The meas­ures in Part 2 Chapter 1, Part 5 and Part 7 Chapter 2 ap­ply to pro­fes­sion­al fish­ing and fish farm­ing.

⁴ The meas­ures lis­ted in Part 2 Chapter 1, Part 6 and Part 7 Chapter 2 ap­ply to bee­keep­ing.¹⁴

¹ Dif­fi­cult pro­duc­tion and liv­ing con­di­tions, in par­tic­u­lar in moun­tain and up­land areas, must be ad­equately taken in­to ac­count in the ap­plic­a­tion of this Act.

² The Fed­er­al Of­fice for Ag­ri­cul­ture (FO­AG) shall di­vide all farmed land in­to zones ac­cord­ing to the de­gree of dif­fi­culty and keep a pro­duc­tion re­gister.¹⁵

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the cri­ter­ia for de­term­in­ing such zones.

¹ The ni­tro­gen and phos­phor­us losses from ag­ri­cul­ture shall be re­duced ap­pro­pri­ately by 2030 re­l­at­ive to the mean value for the years 2014–2016.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the re­duc­tion tar­gets and the meth­od for as­sess­ing achieve­ment of these tar­gets. In do­ing so, it shall also be guided by the aim of elim­in­at­ing im­por­ted ar­ti­fi­cial fer­til­isers by pro­mot­ing the use of nu­tri­ents based on in­di­gen­ous farm­yard ma­nure and in­di­gen­ous bio­mass, tak­ing due ac­count of eco­lo­gic­al and eco­nom­ic con­straints. Be­fore set­ting its re­quire­ments, it shall con­sult the can­tons, the sec­tor­al and pro­du­cer or­gan­isa­tions con­cerned and oth­er stake­hold­er or­gan­isa­tions. It shall de­term­ine the re­port­ing re­quire­ments.

³ The sec­tor­al and pro­du­cer or­gan­isa­tions con­cerned and oth­er stake­hold­er or­gan­isa­tions may take the ne­ces­sary re­duc­tion meas­ures and re­port reg­u­larly to the Con­fed­er­a­tion on the nature and ef­fect of the meas­ures they have taken.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may des­ig­nate the or­gan­isa­tions re­ferred to in para­graphs 2 and 3.

⁵ It may ap­point a private sec­tor agency to per­form cer­tain tasks, such as as­sess­ing meas­ures for re­du­cing ni­tro­gen and phos­phor­us losses, mon­it­or­ing the res­ults or provid­ing ad­vis­ory ser­vices, and may of­fer fin­an­cial sup­port for such activ­it­ies.

¹ The risks to hu­mans, an­im­als and the en­vir­on­ment from the use of plant pro­tec­tion products shall be re­duced and the qual­ity of drink­ing wa­ter, sur­face wa­ters and ground­wa­ter shall be im­proved.

² The risks to sur­face wa­ters and to semi-nat­ur­al hab­it­ats and the ex­tent of ground­wa­ter con­tam­in­a­tion must be re­duced by 50 per cent by 2027 re­l­at­ive to the mean value for the years 2012−2015. If the risks re­main un­ac­cept­able, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may set a re­duc­tion path for the peri­od from 2027.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the in­dic­at­ors for as­sess­ing achieve­ment of the val­ues re­ferred to in para­graph 2. These in­dic­at­ors shall take ac­count of the tox­icity and the use of the vari­ous plant pro­tec­tion products. For this pur­pose, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall con­sider data from, among oth­er sources, the in­form­a­tion sys­tem re­ferred to in Art­icle 165f ^bis.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may define risk re­duc­tion val­ues for oth­er risk areas.

⁵ The sec­tor­al and pro­du­cer or­gan­isa­tions con­cerned and oth­er stake­hold­er or­gan­isa­tions may take risk re­duc­tion meas­ures and re­port reg­u­larly to the Con­fed­er­a­tion on the nature and ef­fect of the meas­ures they have taken.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may des­ig­nate the or­gan­isa­tions re­ferred to in para­graph 5.

⁷ It may ap­point a private sec­tor agency to per­form cer­tain tasks, such as as­sess­ing risk re­duc­tion meas­ures, mon­it­or­ing the res­ults or provid­ing ad­vis­ory ser­vices, and may of­fer fin­an­cial sup­port for such activ­it­ies.

⁸ Should it be­come ap­par­ent that that the re­duc­tion tar­gets re­ferred to in para­graph 2 will not be achieved, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall take the ne­ces­sary meas­ures two years at the latest be­fore the dead­line, spe­cific­ally by re­vok­ing the ap­prov­al of sub­stances pos­ing a par­tic­u­larly high risk.

¹ The meas­ures in this Act aim to en­sure that farms run on a sus­tain­able basis and which are eco­nom­ic­ally ef­fi­cient can achieve in­comes over a peri­od of sev­er­al years that are com­par­able to in­comes in oth­er sec­tors in the same re­gion.

² If in­comes fall clearly be­low a com­par­able level, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall in­tro­duce tem­por­ary meas­ures to im­prove the situ­ation.

³ Oth­er branches of trade and in­dustry, the eco­nom­ic situ­ation of work­ers out­side the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the state of the fed­er­al cof­fers must also be taken in­to ac­count.

Fund­ing for the most im­port­ant areas of activ­ity shall be ap­proved for a max­im­um peri­od of four years on the basis of a Fed­er­al Coun­cil dis­patch with a simple fed­er­al de­cree.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall draw up gen­er­al con­di­tions for the pro­duc­tion and sale of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products so as to en­sure that the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor can op­er­ate sus­tain­ably and cost-ef­fi­ciently while at the same time achiev­ing max­im­um mar­ket prices from the sale of its products.

² At the same time it shall take in­to ac­count the ne­ces­sity for product safety, con­sumer pro­tec­tion and re­li­able food sup­plies for the coun­try.¹⁸

¹ Pro­du­cers’ or­gan­isa­tions or the cor­res­pond­ing branches are re­spons­ible for pro­mot­ing qual­ity and sales, as well as for en­sur­ing that pro­duc­tion and sup­ply are ad­ap­ted to the de­mands of the mar­ket.

^1bis The branch or­gan­isa­tions may draw up stand­ard con­tracts.¹⁹

² A branch or­gan­isa­tion is an as­so­ci­ation of pro­du­cers of in­di­vidu­al products or product groups with pro­cessors and, in some cases, with traders.

¹ The or­gan­isa­tions of pro­du­cers of in­di­vidu­al products or product groups or the cor­res­pond­ing branches may pub­lish guideline prices at a na­tion­al or re­gion­al level to which sup­pli­ers and buy­ers have agreed.

² Guideline prices must be set ac­cord­ing to dif­fer­ent levels of qual­ity.

³ No in­di­vidu­al busi­ness may be forced to com­ply with guideline prices.

⁴ No guideline prices may be set for re­tail sales.

¹ In­so­far as self-help meas­ures men­tioned in Art­icle 8 para­graph 1 come un­der threat from busi­nesses that do not com­ply with the col­lect­ively agreed meas­ures, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­tro­duce reg­u­la­tions if the or­gan­isa­tion:²²

a.

is rep­res­ent­at­ive;

b.

is not act­ive in pro­duc­tion, pro­cessing or sales;

c.

has ap­proved the self-help meas­ures by a clear ma­jor­ity.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ob­lige non-mem­bers of an or­gan­isa­tion to con­trib­ute to­wards fund­ing self-help meas­ures men­tioned in Art­icle 8 para­graph 1 if the con­di­tions out­lined in para­graph 1 are met and the or­gan­isa­tion re­ceives con­tri­bu­tions from its mem­bers for fund­ing self-help meas­ures. Such con­tri­bu­tions may not be used to cov­er the or­gan­isa­tion’s ad­min­is­trat­ive ex­penses.²³

³ With re­gard to ad­apt­ing pro­duc­tion and sup­ply to mar­ket de­mand, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions solely in case of ex­cep­tion­al de­vel­op­ments that are not caused by struc­tur­al prob­lems.²⁴

⁴ Products sold dir­ectly to the pub­lic may not be made sub­ject to the reg­u­la­tions men­tioned in para­graph 1, and farm­ers who sell dir­ect to the pub­lic may not be made li­able for con­tri­bu­tions un­der para­graph 2 based on the volume of products thus sold.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions on qual­ity as well as on the meth­ods used to ob­tain ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and their pro­cessing if such reg­u­la­tions are re­quired for their ex­port or for com­pli­ance with Switzer­land’s in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions or with in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards that are im­port­ant for Swiss ag­ri­cul­ture.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall sup­port joint meas­ures ad­op­ted by pro­du­cers, pro­cessors or traders that are aimed at im­prov­ing or en­sur­ing the qual­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and goods pro­cessed from them, as well as of pro­cessing meth­ods.

² Such meas­ures must:

a.

pro­mote in­nov­a­tion or co­oper­a­tion throughout the product chain;

b.

fore­see the par­ti­cip­a­tion of pro­du­cers and be first and fore­most of be­ne­fit to them.

³ Sup­port may be provided in par­tic­u­lar for:

a.

pre­lim­in­ary stud­ies;

b.

the ini­tial im­ple­ment­a­tion of the meas­ures;

c.

the in­clu­sion of pro­du­cers in pro­jects aimed at im­prov­ing qual­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall draw up re­quire­ments for such sup­port.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may sub­sid­ise na­tion­al or re­gion­al meas­ures in­tro­duced by pro­du­cers, pro­cessors or traders that are aimed at pro­mot­ing the sale of Swiss ag­ri­cul­tur­al products with­in the coun­try and abroad.²⁷

² For this pur­pose it may also sup­port ef­forts to in­crease aware­ness of pub­lic ser­vices provided by the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.²⁸

³ It may also co­ordin­ate sub­sid­ised meas­ures with­in Switzer­land and abroad, for ex­ample by de­vis­ing a com­mon iden­tity.²⁹

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall draw up the cri­ter­ia for the al­loc­a­tion of sub­sidies.

¹ In or­der to avoid slumps in the price of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products, the Con­fed­er­a­tion may con­trib­ute to the cost of tem­por­ary meas­ures, in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, in or­der to re­lieve the mar­ket. It may not sub­sid­ise the re­duc­tion of sur­pluses due to struc­tur­al factors.

² Fed­er­al sub­sidies are nor­mally con­di­tion­al on ap­pro­pri­ate con­tri­bu­tions from the can­tons or from in­ter­ested or­gan­isa­tions.

¹ In the in­terests of cred­ib­il­ity and to pro­mote qual­ity and sales, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing the la­belling of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and pro­cessed products which:

a.

are man­u­fac­tured us­ing cer­tain meth­ods;

b.

have oth­er spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­ist­ics;

c.

come from moun­tain areas;

d.

can be dis­tin­guished by their ori­gin;

e.³⁰

are man­u­fac­tured without the use of cer­tain pro­ced­ures or do not dis­play spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­ist­ics;

f.³¹

are man­u­fac­tured ac­cord­ing to spe­cial cri­ter­ia for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

² La­belling such products ac­cord­ing to these reg­u­la­tions is vol­un­tary.

³ The pro­vi­sions of le­gis­la­tion on gene tech­no­logy and food­stuffs are re­served.³²

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­vise of­fi­cial sym­bols for la­belling un­der the terms of this Art­icle and Art­icle 63 para­graph 1 let­ters a and b and may make their use man­dat­ory.³³

⁵ It is man­dat­ory to use these sym­bols in sales pro­mo­tion cam­paigns in­volving meas­ures men­tioned in Art­icle 12.³⁴

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late:

a.

the re­quire­ments that must be met by the products and pro­duc­tion meth­ods, in par­tic­u­lar those that claim to be eco­lo­gic­al;

b.

mon­it­or­ing pro­ced­ures.

² Products may only be la­belled as or­gan­ic if the en­tire farm where they are pro­duced is run or­gan­ic­ally. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in par­tic­u­lar al­low ex­cep­tions for farms with per­man­ent crops in­so­far as the in­teg­rity of the or­gan­ic pro­duc­tion and its abil­ity to be checked is not com­prom­ised.³⁵

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­cog­nise the guidelines is­sued by or­gan­isa­tions if they in­clude the re­quire­ments men­tioned un­der para­graph 1 let­ter a.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­cog­nise la­belling for for­eign products if it is based on equi­val­ent re­quire­ments.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set up a re­gister of des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin and geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions.

² In par­tic­u­lar it shall reg­u­late:

a.

en­ti­tle­ment to re­gis­tra­tion;

b.

the re­quire­ments for re­gis­tra­tion, in par­tic­u­lar re­quire­ments re­gard­ing product spe­cific­a­tions;

c.

ap­peal and re­gis­tra­tion pro­ced­ures;

d.

mon­it­or­ing.

^2bis Swiss and for­eign des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin and geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions may be entered in the re­gister.³⁷

³ Re­gistered des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions may not be used as gen­er­ic names. Gen­er­ic names may not be re­gistered as des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin or as geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions.

⁴ If the name of a can­ton or a loc­al­ity is used in a des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or a geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion, it must be veri­fied that re­gis­ter­ing the product com­plies with any rel­ev­ant can­ton­al reg­u­la­tions.

⁵ Re­gistered des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions may not be re­gistered as product trade marks if the terms of para­graph 7 ap­ply.³⁸

^5bis If a trade mark is filed that con­tains a des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion that is identic­al or sim­il­ar to a des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion that has been filed for re­gis­tra­tion for identic­al or com­par­able goods, the trade mark ex­am­in­a­tion pro­ced­ure shall be sus­pen­ded un­til a leg­ally bind­ing de­cision has been taken on the ap­plic­a­tion to re­gister the des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or the geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion.³⁹

⁶ Any per­son who uses a re­gistered des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion for identic­al or sim­il­ar ag­ri­cul­tur­al products or goods pro­cessed from them must com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions in­dic­ated in para­graph 2 let­ter b. This does not ap­ply to the use of trade marks that are identic­al or sim­il­ar to a re­gistered des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion and which have been de­pos­ited or re­gistered in good faith or to which the right of use has been ac­quired in good faith:

a.

be­fore 1 Janu­ary 1996; or

b.

be­fore the name of the re­gistered des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tion came un­der pro­tec­tion un­der the terms of this Act or on an­oth­er leg­al basis, in­so­far as none of the grounds for nullity or ex­piry in­dic­ated in the Trade­mark Pro­tec­tion Act of 28 Au­gust 1992⁴⁰ can be demon­strated for the trade mark.⁴¹

^6bis In as­sess­ing the leg­al­ity of the use of a trade mark ac­quired in good faith un­der the terms of para­graph 6, par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion should be giv­en to the ques­tion of wheth­er there is any risk of de­cep­tion or a breach of genu­ine com­pet­i­tion.⁴²

⁷ Re­gistered des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin and geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions are pro­tec­ted in par­tic­u­lar against:

a.

any com­mer­cial use in re­la­tion to oth­er products which takes ad­vant­age of the repu­ta­tion of a pro­tec­ted des­ig­na­tion;

b.

any form of usurp­a­tion, im­it­a­tion or coun­ter­feit­ing.

¹ Ag­ri­cul­tur­al products or products pro­cessed from them may be la­belled with in­form­a­tion about their par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­ist­ics or the pro­duc­tion meth­ods used that come un­der the reg­u­la­tions (en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly pro­duc­tion, proof of or­gan­ic pro­duc­tion or an­im­al-friendly live­stock man­age­ment) or with in­form­a­tion con­cern­ing the reg­u­la­tions.

² In par­tic­u­lar, any such in­form­a­tion must com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions on pro­tec­tion against de­cep­tion un­der the terms of le­gis­la­tion on food­stuffs.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall sup­port the branch, pro­du­cers’ and pro­cessors’ or­gan­isa­tions in pro­tect­ing la­bels of Swiss ori­gin and geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions out­side Switzer­land.

² It may take on part of the ex­penses ac­cru­ing to Swiss mis­sions abroad if the lat­ter are asked by branch, pro­du­cers’ or pro­cessors’ or­gan­isa­tions to pro­tect des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin or a geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions.

When im­port du­ties are set, do­mest­ic sup­ply and po­ten­tial sales of sim­il­ar do­mest­ic products must be taken in­to ac­count.

¹ Un­less such ac­tion breaches in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall in­tro­duce reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing the de­clar­a­tion of products that have been ob­tained us­ing meth­ods that are banned in Switzer­land; it shall raise im­port du­ties or ban the im­port of such products.⁴⁵

² Un­der the terms of para­graph 1, banned pro­duc­tion meth­ods in­clude those meth­ods which en­danger:

a.

the life or health of hu­man be­ings, an­im­als or plants; or

b.

the en­vir­on­ment.

¹ Un­less this Act provides oth­er­wise, re­spons­ib­il­ity and pro­ced­ures for set­ting cus­toms tar­iffs are gov­erned by cus­toms le­gis­la­tion.

² The cus­toms tar­iffs for sug­ar to­geth­er with the guar­an­tee fund con­tri­bu­tions (Art. 16 Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Sup­ply Act of 17 June 2016⁴⁶)amount to a min­im­um of 7 francs per 100 kg gross. This pro­vi­sions ap­plies un­til 2026.⁴⁷

¹ The in­come from cus­toms du­ties on ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and food­stuffs for the peri­od 2009–2016 is ear­marked for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose, namely to fund ac­com­pa­ny­ing meas­ures in re­la­tion to the im­ple­ment­a­tion of a free-trade agree­ment with the European Uni­on re­gard­ing ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and food­stuffs or of a WTO agree­ment.

² In par­tic­u­lar, the fund­ing must be used for ac­com­pa­ny­ing meas­ures to sup­port ag­ri­cul­ture.

³ If ne­go­ti­ations are un­suc­cess­ful, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall re­lease the funds for oth­er uses.

⁴ If the pro­posed ac­com­pa­ny­ing meas­ures re­quire less fund­ing than that ear­marked for this spe­cif­ic pur­pose, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­lease the re­main­ing amount for oth­er uses.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­tro­duce threshold prices for in­di­vidu­al products. The terms of Art­icle 17 ap­ply.

² The threshold price cor­res­ponds to the tar­get im­port price, com­pris­ing the price franco Swiss bor­der and cus­toms du­ties as well as charges with a sim­il­ar ef­fect.⁴⁹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide how the price franco Swiss bor­der, un­taxed, is cal­cu­lated.⁵⁰

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may set the threshold price for a group of products. The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs, Edu­ca­tion and Re­search (EAER)⁵¹ shall set a guideline im­port value for in­di­vidu­al products.

⁴ The EAER shall de­cide to what ex­tent the sum of the cus­toms duty rate and price franco Swiss bor­der, un­taxed, may de­vi­ate from the threshold price be­fore the cus­toms duty rate has to be ad­jus­ted (band).⁵²

⁵ The FO­AG⁵³ shall set the cus­toms duty rate for products with a threshold price in such a way that the im­port price lies with­in the band.

⁶ In­so­far as the sale of sim­il­ar do­mest­ic products does not come un­der threat, the EAER may set the cus­toms duty rate lower than in­dic­ated in para­graph 5.

⁷ The cus­toms duty rates may not en­tail any ele­ments of pro­tec­tion vis-à-visin­dustry.⁵⁴

¹ Tar­iff quotas for ag­ri­cul­tur­al products are set out in An­nex 2 to the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 9 Oc­to­ber 1986⁵⁵ (Gen­er­al Tar­iff).

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may modi­fy tar­iff quotas and, if ap­plic­able, their staggered in­tro­duc­tion as part of the Gen­er­al Tar­iff.

³ The terms of Art­icle 17 ap­ply to the set­ting and ad­just­ment of tar­iff quotas as well as to their staggered in­tro­duc­tion.

⁴ If mar­ket con­di­tions re­quire the fre­quent ad­just­ment of tar­iff quotas, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate re­spons­ib­il­ity for ad­just­ing tar­iff quotas and for stag­ger­ing their in­tro­duc­tion to the EAER or to an agency that is part of the Fed­er­al De­part­ment.

⁵ The pro­vi­sions of this Act ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to ad­di­tion­al tar­iff quotas as defined un­der the terms of Art­icle 4 para­graph 3 let­ter c of the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 9 Oc­to­ber 1986.

¹ Com­pet­i­tion must be main­tained in the al­loc­a­tion of tar­iff quotas.

² The au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible shall al­loc­ate tar­iff quotas ac­cord­ing to the fol­low­ing pro­ced­ures and cri­ter­ia in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

by auc­tion;

b.

ac­cord­ing to do­mest­ic pur­chas­ing ob­lig­a­tions;

c.

on the basis of the quant­ity re­ques­ted;

d.

ac­cord­ing to the or­der of re­ceipt of ap­plic­a­tions for per­mits;

e.⁵⁶

ac­cord­ing to the or­der of as­sess­ments;

f.

on the basis of the ap­plic­ant’s im­ports to date.

³ Pro­mo­tion of Swiss pro­duc­tion as in­dic­ated in para­graph 2 let­ter b is defined as the pur­chase of sim­il­ar goods pro­duced in Switzer­land and of stand­ard trade qual­ity.

⁴ In or­der to avoid ab­use, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­clude cer­tain im­port­ers from en­ti­tle­ment.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate re­spons­ib­il­ity for set­ting the cri­ter­ia for the al­loc­a­tion of tar­iff quotas to the EAER.

⁶ The al­loc­a­tion of tar­iff quotas shall be made pub­lic.

¹ If the al­loc­a­tion of a tar­iff quota share is de­pend­ent on pro­mo­tion of Swiss pro­duc­tion (Art. 22 para­graph 2 let­ter b), the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­cide on ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­at­ory pay­ments or charges if:

a.

such pro­mo­tion is not ne­ces­sary in view of its pur­pose; or

b.

it is im­possible for the im­port­er to pro­mote Swiss pro­duc­tion or do­ing so would lead to un­reas­on­able hard­ship.

² Com­pens­at­ory pay­ments or charges must be set in such a way that they bal­ance out the ad­vant­ages gained by the im­port­er from not hav­ing to pro­mote Swiss pro­duc­tion.

¹ In or­der to gath­er stat­ist­ics on im­ports, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­cide that cer­tain ag­ri­cul­tur­al products re­quire an im­port per­mit.

² In view of the pro­tect­ive meas­ures that the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­tro­duce, the EAER is au­thor­ised to sus­pend the is­su­ing of im­port per­mits un­til the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has taken a de­cision.

³ The ap­plic­a­tion of pro­tec­tion clauses in in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments on the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor are gov­erned by Art­icle 11 of the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 9 Oc­to­ber 1986⁵⁷.

⁴ Para­graph 2 does not ap­ply to the ap­plic­a­tion of pro­tec­tion clauses in in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments un­der:

a.

Art­icle 1 of the Fed­er­al Act of 25 June 1982⁵⁸ on In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Meas­ures; and

b.

Art­icle 7 of the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 9 Oc­to­ber 1986.

¹ Where the branches in ques­tion pay taxes on im­por­ted ag­ri­cul­tur­al products in fa­vour of do­mest­ic products on a vol­un­tary basis, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may pre­scribe the max­im­um rate for such taxes in or­der to com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments. It may del­eg­ate this task to the EAER.

² If the max­im­um rate for such taxes is re­duced be­cause of in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments, the taxes are mod­i­fied at the same rate as cus­toms du­ties. De­vi­ation from this rule is al­lowed in jus­ti­fied cases.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ob­serve mar­ket prices that are af­fected by fed­er­al ag­ri­cul­tur­al meas­ures at vari­ous levels, from pro­duc­tion to con­sump­tion. It shall reg­u­late the in­volve­ment of mar­ket play­ers.⁶¹

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall des­ig­nate the agency to carry out the ne­ces­sary data col­lec­tion and in­form the gen­er­al pub­lic.

¹ Ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied ag­ri­cul­tur­al products or aids to pro­duc­tion⁶³ may only be pro­duced, reared, im­por­ted, re­leased or put in­to cir­cu­la­tion if the re­quire­ments of this Act and in par­tic­u­lar those of le­gis­la­tion on gene tech­no­logy, en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion, an­im­al pro­tec­tion and food­stuffs are met.

² Re­gard­less of any fur­ther pro­vi­sion, in par­tic­u­lar in le­gis­la­tion on gene tech­no­logy, en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion and an­im­al pro­tec­tion, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for man­dat­ory per­mits or oth­er meas­ures for the pro­duc­tion and sale of such goods or aids to pro­duc­tion.

¹ If a pat­ent hold­er has put aids to pro­duc­tion or ag­ri­cul­tur­al cap­it­al goods in­to cir­cu­la­tion with­in Switzer­land or abroad or has agreed to their be­ing put in­to cir­cu­la­tion, such aids or goods may be im­por­ted, sold on and used com­mer­cially.

² Ag­ri­cul­tur­al cap­it­al goods are in­vest­ment goods such as tract­ors, ma­chinery, tools and in­stall­a­tions and their com­pon­ent parts that are in­ten­ded pre­dom­in­antly for use in ag­ri­cul­ture.

¹ This Chapter ap­plies to cow’s milk.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend cer­tain pro­vi­sions, in par­tic­u­lar Art­icles 38 and 39, to cov­er goat’s and sheep’s milk.⁶⁷

¹ Branch or­gan­isa­tions in the milk sec­tor are re­spons­ible for draw­ing up a stand­ard con­tract for the pur­chase and sale of un­treated milk. The pro­vi­sions of the stand­ard con­tract may not have a marked det­ri­ment­al ef­fect on com­pet­i­tion. The con­tract­ing part­ners are re­spons­ible for set­ting prices and quant­it­ies.

² A stand­ard con­tract with­in the mean­ing of this Art­icle is a con­tract that has a min­im­um peri­od of valid­ity and pos­sible ex­ten­sion of one year and in­cludes terms con­cern­ing quant­it­ies, prices and meth­ods of pay­ment.

³ At the re­quest of a branch or­gan­isa­tion, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­clare the stand­ard con­tract to be gen­er­ally bind­ing in re­la­tion to all stages of the pur­chase and sale of un­treated milk.

⁴ The re­quire­ments that must be met by the branch or­gan­isa­tions and the de­cision mak­ing are gov­erned by Art­icle 9 para­graph 1.

⁵ Any lit­ig­a­tion arising from the stand­ard con­tract or in­di­vidu­al con­tracts is sub­ject to the jur­is­dic­tion of the civil courts.

⁶ If a branch or­gan­isa­tion is un­able to agree on a stand­ard con­tract, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue tem­por­ary reg­u­la­tions on the pur­chase and sale of un­treated milk.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may make an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment to pro­du­cers for milk that is used in cheese-mak­ing.

² The ad­di­tion­al pay­ment amounts to 15 cents, un­der de­duc­tion of the amount of the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment for com­mer­cial milk in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 40. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the re­quire­ments for the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment. It may ex­clude low-fat cheeses from the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.⁷²

³ It may ad­just this amount de­pend­ing on trends in quant­it­ies.⁷³

¹ Pro­du­cers of milk that is used in cheese-mak­ing and ob­tained without the use of sil­age re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall fix the level of this ad­di­tion­al pay­ment and stip­u­late the de­gree of firm­ness of the cheese and the types of cheese that en­title the pro­du­cer to an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment. It may ex­clude low-fat cheeses from the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.⁷⁴

³ This ad­di­tion­al pay­ment is fixed at 3 cents. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ad­just this amount de­pend­ing on trends in quant­it­ies.⁷⁵

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may make an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment to pro­du­cers for com­mer­cial milk.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the level of and the re­quire­ments for the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.

³ The branch or­gan­isa­tions may take joint self-help meas­ures re­lat­ing to the use of the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment in terms of para­graph 1.

¹ The milk pro­cessor shall in­form the agency des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil:

a.

of the quant­ity of milk sup­plied by pro­du­cers; and

b.

how he or she has pro­cessed the milk.

² Pro­du­cers who sell milk and dairy products dir­ect must in­form the agency of the quant­it­ies pro­duced and sold dir­ect.

³ …⁷⁸

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall com­pensate the dairy farm­ing or­gan­isa­tions that it en­trusts with du­ties un­der pub­lic law.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late max­im­um stock levels for each farm for vari­ous live­stock spe­cies.

² If vari­ous live­stock spe­cies are kept on a farm, the sum of the in­di­vidu­al per­cent­age shares of the rel­ev­ant max­im­um stock levels may not ex­ceed 100 per cent.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may al­low ex­cep­tions for:

a.

fed­er­al ex­per­i­ment­al farms and the ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search in­sti­tutes, the poultry hus­bandry school in Zol­likofen and the Swiss Test­ing Sta­tion for Fat­ten­ing Per­form­ance and Car­cass Qual­ity in Sem­pach;

b.⁸⁰

farms that feed pigs with by-products is­sued from milk and food pro­cessing, thereby ful­filling dis­pos­al man­age­ment tasks in the pub­lic in­terest that are of re­gion­al sig­ni­fic­ance.

¹ Farms that ex­ceed the max­im­um stock level un­der Art­icle 46 must pay an an­nu­al tax.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the rate of tax so that keep­ing an ex­cess­ive num­ber of an­im­als is un­eco­nom­ic­al.

³ Where two or more man­agers keep an­im­als on the same farm, each of the man­agers shall pay a tax which is pro­por­tion­al to their share of live­stock.

⁴ The di­vi­sion of farms to cir­cum­vent the pro­vi­sions on max­im­um stock levels shall not be re­cog­nised.

¹ The tar­iff quotas for slaughter an­im­als and meat shall be auc­tioned.

² The tar­iff quota shares for meat from cattle (not in­clud­ing fil­leted hindquarter cuts) and for sheep shall be al­loc­ated at a rate of 10 per cent based on the num­ber of an­im­als pur­chased by auc­tion from su­per­vised pub­lic slaughter an­im­al mar­kets. Ex­emp­ted there­from is kosh­er and halal meat.

^2bisThe tar­iff quota shares for meat from cattle, sheep, goats and horses shall be al­loc­ated at a rate of 40 per cent based on the num­ber of slaughtered an­im­als. Ex­emp­ted there­from is kosh­er and halal meat.⁸³

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may dis­pense with al­loc­a­tion ar­range­ments for cer­tain products un­der tar­iff head­ings 0206, 0210 and 1602.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue dir­ect­ives and cri­ter­ia for clas­si­fy­ing the qual­ity of slaughtered cattle, horses, pigs, sheep and goats.

² It may:

a.

de­clare the use of these clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia to be man­dat­ory;

b.

re­quire qual­ity clas­si­fic­a­tion to be car­ried out by a neut­ral agency in cer­tain cases;

c.⁸⁴

reg­u­late the pro­ced­ure for as­cer­tain­ing the car­cass weight.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate the task of de­term­in­ing the clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia to the FO­AG.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide sub­sidies for tem­por­ary mar­ket re­lief meas­ures in the event of sea­son­al or oth­er tem­por­ary sur­pluses in the meat mar­ket.

² From 2007, the Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide sub­sidies to the can­tons for the or­gan­isa­tion, con­duct, su­per­vi­sion and in­fra­struc­ture of pub­lic mar­kets in the moun­tain re­gions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate the fol­low­ing tasks to private or­gan­isa­tions:

a.

con­duct­ing tem­por­ary mar­ket re­lief meas­ures in the case of sea­son­al or oth­er tem­por­ary sur­pluses in the meat mar­ket;

b.

su­per­vising mar­ket activ­it­ies in pub­lic mar­kets and in abat­toirs;

c.

clas­si­fy­ing liv­ing and slaughtered an­im­als ac­cord­ing to their qual­ity.⁸⁶

² The private or­gan­isa­tions shall be re­mu­ner­ated for car­ry­ing out these tasks.⁸⁷

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ap­point an agency to veri­fy wheth­er the private or­gan­isa­tions have car­ried out their tasks cost-ef­fect­ively.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may take meas­ures re­lat­ing to the sale of sheep’s wool. It may sup­port do­mest­ic sales through sub­sidies.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide sub­sidies for sales meas­ures to be­ne­fit do­mest­ic egg pro­duc­tion.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may pay sub­sidies for in­di­vidu­al crops in or­der to:

a.

main­tain the pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city and ef­fi­ciency of in­di­vidu­al pro­cessing chains to en­sure ad­equate pro­vi­sion for the pop­u­la­tion;

b.

en­sure an ad­equate sup­ply of fod­der for live­stock.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­cides on the crops and the amount of the sub­sidies.

^2bis For sug­ar beet for sug­ar pro­duc­tion, a con­tri­bu­tion of 2,100 francs per hec­tare and year shall be paid un­til 2026. If the sug­ar beet is grown in ac­cord­ance with the re­quire­ments for or­gan­ic farm­ing or in­teg­rated pro­duc­tion, an ad­di­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion of 200 Swiss francs per hec­tare per year shall be paid un­til 2026.⁹²

³ Sub­sidies may also be paid for farm­land in the for­eign part of the Swiss bor­der zone un­der Art­icle 43 para­graph 2 of the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 18 March 2005⁹³.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may make an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment to pro­du­cers for grain. The Con­fed­er­a­tion may re­strict the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment to grain for hu­man con­sump­tion.

² The ad­di­tion­al pay­ment shall be based on the budgeted re­sources and the quant­ity or the area un­der cul­tiv­a­tion that is eli­gible for sub­sidies. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the re­quire­ments for mak­ing the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.

³ The branch or­gan­isa­tions may take joint self-help meas­ures re­lat­ing to the use of the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment in terms of para­graph 1.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may in­tro­duce meas­ures re­gard­ing the pro­cessing of pomaceous fruit, stone-fruit, ber­ries and fruit products as well as grapes. It may pay sub­sidies for pro­cessing fruit.

² It may sub­sid­ise joint meas­ures taken by pro­du­cers to ad­apt the pro­duc­tion of fruit and ve­get­ables to mar­ket re­quire­ments. Such sub­sidies may be paid un­til the end of 2017 at the latest.

¹ A per­mit from the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies is re­quired for plant­ing new vines.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies must be in­formed if ex­ist­ing vine­yards are re­planted.

³ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall is­sue per­mits for the plant­ing of vines for the pur­pose of wine pro­duc­tion if the planned site is suit­able for this pur­pose.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set out the ba­sic con­di­tions for is­su­ing per­mits and re­gis­ter­ing the plant­ing of vines. It may al­low ex­cep­tions.

⁵ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may is­sue a tem­por­ary and re­gion­al ban on the plant­ing of new vines if meas­ures for re­liev­ing the mar­ket or for the con­ver­sion of vine­yards are be­ing fun­ded or if the mar­ket situ­ation re­quires such ac­tion to be taken.¹⁰⁰

The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies keep a re­gister of vine­yards that in­cludes any spe­cial char­ac­ter­ist­ics.

¹ FO­AG ex­am­ines the suit­ab­il­ity of grape vari­et­ies.

² It keeps a re­gister of grape vari­et­ies with in­dic­a­tions of suit­ab­il­ity.

¹ Wines are di­vided in­to the fol­low­ing classes:

a.

wines with an ap­pel­la­tion d’ori­gine con­trôlée;

b.

do­mest­ic wines;

c.

table wines.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall draw up a list of the cri­ter­ia gov­ern­ing the clas­si­fic­a­tion of wines with an ap­pel­la­tion d’ori­gine con­trôléeand do­mest­ic wines. It may stip­u­late a min­im­um level of nat­ur­al sug­ar con­tent and a max­im­um yield per unit of land area, tak­ing in­to ac­count the pro­duc­tion con­di­tions spe­cif­ic to a giv­en area.

³ Oth­er­wise, the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall set out the re­quire­ments for each cri­terion with re­gard to wines with an ap­pel­la­tion d’ori­gine con­trôlée and do­mest­ic wines pro­duced with­in their bor­ders and un­der their own tra­di­tion­al des­ig­na­tion.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the re­quire­ments con­cern­ing do­mest­ic wines that are sold without a tra­di­tion­al des­ig­na­tion and for table wines. It may define the terms re­lat­ing spe­cific­ally to wine, in par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion­al terms, and stip­u­late their use.

⁵ It shall draw up reg­u­la­tions for the de­clas­si­fic­a­tion of wines that do not meet the min­im­um re­quire­ments.

⁶ The terms of Art­icle 16 para­graphs 6, 6^bis, 7 and 16b ap­ply to the la­belling of wines with an ap­pel­la­tion d’ori­gine con­trôlée and of oth­er wines with geo­graph­ic­al in­dic­a­tions.

¹ In or­der to pro­tect des­ig­na­tions and la­bels, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions for the veri­fic­a­tion of grape har­vests and trad­ing in wine. It shall stip­u­late re­quire­ments that must be met by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies, the pro­du­cers, the cel­larers and wine traders, in par­tic­u­lar with re­spect to re­gis­tra­tion, ac­com­pa­ny­ing doc­u­ment­a­tion, cel­lar ac­counts and in­vent­or­ies. In­so­far as the pro­tec­tion of des­ig­na­tions and la­bels is not com­prom­ised, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may al­low ex­cep­tions and sim­pli­fic­a­tions. It shall co­ordin­ate the veri­fic­a­tion pro­cess.

² In or­der to sim­pli­fy col­lab­or­a­tion between the veri­fic­a­tion agen­cies, it may fore­see a cent­ral data­base. It shall stip­u­late re­quire­ments for such a data­base with re­gard to con­tent and op­er­a­tion as well as data qual­ity, and set out the con­di­tions for ac­cess and use of the said data.

³ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are re­spons­ible for car­ry­ing out the grape har­vest veri­fic­a­tion. The Con­fed­er­a­tion may of­fer a glob­al amount to help fund the can­ton­al mon­it­or­ing costs, the amount be­ing based on the area of vine­yards in the can­ton in ques­tion.

⁴ The trade in wine is mon­itored by an agency des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

¹ Farm­ers re­ceive dir­ect pay­ments as com­pens­a­tion for the pub­lic ser­vices they provide.

² Dir­ect pay­ments in­clude:

a.

sub­sidies for farm­land;

b.

sub­sidies for en­sur­ing sup­ply;

c.

biod­iversity sub­sidies;

d.

sub­sidies for the qual­ity of the land­scape;

e.

sub­sidies for pro­duc­tion sys­tems;

f.

sub­sidies for the ef­fi­cient use of re­sources;

g.

bridging sub­sidies.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil stip­u­lates the level of sub­sidies, tak­ing in­to ac­count the ex­tent of the pub­lic ser­vices provided the work in­volved in provid­ing such ser­vices and the po­ten­tial mar­ket yield.

¹ Dir­ect pay­ments are made on con­di­tion that:

a.

the busi­ness is run as a farm;

b.

proof of eco­lo­gic­al per­form­ance can be provided;

c.

ag­ri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion meth­ods com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of le­gis­la­tion on the pro­tec­tion of wa­ters, the en­vir­on­ment and an­im­al wel­fare;

d.

the land farmed does not lie with­in a des­ig­nated build­ing zone that has been leg­ally ex­cluded un­der plan­ning le­gis­la­tion after this pro­vi­sion comes in­to force;

e.

a min­im­um amount of la­bour on the farm in stand­ard la­bour units is reached;

f.

a min­im­um amount of work is car­ried out by la­bour­ers em­ployed by the farm;

g.

the farm­er is not over a cer­tain age;

h.

the farm­er has a qual­i­fic­a­tion in ag­ri­cul­ture.

² Proof of eco­lo­gic­al per­form­ance in­cludes:

a.

ap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions for live­stock;

b.

bal­anced use of fer­til­isers;

c.

an ad­equate pro­por­tion of land set aside for biod­iversity;

d.

reg­u­la­tion use of ob­jects in­cluded in in­vent­or­ies of na­tion­al in­terest un­der the terms of the Fed­er­al Act of 1 Ju­ly 1966¹⁰⁷ on Nature and Cul­tur­al Her­it­age;

e.

reg­u­lar crop ro­ta­tion;

f.

ap­pro­pri­ate soil pro­tec­tion;

g.

spe­cif­ic choice and ap­plic­a­tion of plant pro­tec­tion products.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil:

a.

shall set out the terms for proof of eco­lo­gic­al per­form­ance;

b.

shall set out the terms for val­ues and re­quire­ments in re­la­tion to para­graph 1 let­ters a and e–h;

c.

may lim­it the amount of dir­ect pay­ments per stand­ard la­bour unit;

d.

may al­low ex­cep­tions to let­ter c and para­graph 1 let­ter h;

e.

may al­low ex­cep­tions to para­graph 1 let­ter a for dir­ect pay­ments for biod­iversity and land­scape qual­ity;

f.

shall set the lim­its in re­la­tion to the area per farm above which pay­ments are gradu­ated or re­duced.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late fur­ther re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions re­gard­ing dir­ect pay­ments.

⁵ It shall de­cide on the areas for which dir­ect pay­ments are made.

¹ In sum­mer pas­ture areas, dir­ect pay­ments are made to farm­ers who use a sum­mer graz­ing farm, who be­long to a sum­mer graz­ing co­oper­at­ive or who graze their live­stock on sum­mer pas­tures.

² The con­di­tions stated in Art­icle 70a para­graph 1 do not ap­ply to sum­mer pas­tures, with the ex­cep­tion of let­ter c.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set out the farm­ing re­quire­ments for sum­mer pas­tures.

¹ Sub­sidies are paid for main­tain­ing open farm­land. These sub­sidies in­clude:

a.

a pay­ment per hec­tare, gradu­ated by zone, in or­der to en­cour­age the farm­ing of in­di­vidu­al zones;

b.

a gradu­ated dif­fi­culty pay­ment per hec­tare based on gradi­ent and type of land-use in hilly areas in or­der to en­cour­age farm­ing un­der to­po­graph­ic­ally dif­fi­cult con­di­tions;

c.

in ad­di­tion, a gradu­ated pay­ment based on the pro­por­tion of hay mead­ows on steep slopes;

d.

a pay­ment for graz­ing cer­tain live­stock for 100 days on sum­mer pas­tures for farms run on a year-round basis in or­der to en­cour­age the use of Alpine pas­tures;

e.

a sum­mer graz­ing sub­sidy, gradu­ated ac­cord­ing to live­stock cat­egory, per live­stock unit on sum­mer graz­ing or per nor­mal stock in or­der to en­cour­age the use and main­ten­ance of sum­mer pas­tures.

² In the case of sum­mer graz­ing sub­sidies, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the ac­cept­able level of oc­cu­pa­tion and live­stock cat­egor­ies for which the sub­sidy is paid.

¹ Sub­sidies for en­sur­ing sup­plies are paid to main­tain re­li­able food sup­plies for the pop­u­la­tion. These sub­sidies in­clude:

a.

a ba­sic pay­ment per hec­tare to main­tain pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city;

b.

a pay­ment per hec­tare to en­sure an ad­equate pro­por­tion of open farm­land with long-term crop­ping;

c.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per hec­tare for de­gree of dif­fi­culty in up­land and moun­tain areas to main­tain pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city un­der cli­mat­ic dif­fi­culties.

² In the case of graz­ing land, sub­sidies are only paid if the farm has a min­im­um num­ber of cattle. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late min­im­um live­stock num­bers. It may de­cide that no min­im­um is ne­ces­sary for cul­tiv­ated mead­ows and areas of land re­served for pro­mot­ing biod­iversity, and set a lower ba­sic pay­ment for the lat­ter.

³ Sub­sidies for en­sur­ing sup­ply may also be paid for land in oth­er coun­tries along the Swiss bor­der un­der the terms of Art­icle 43 para­graph a of the Cus­toms Tar­iff Act of 18 March 2005¹⁰⁸.

¹ Biod­iversity sub­sidies are paid in or­der to pro­mote and main­tain biod­iversity. These sub­sidies in­clude:

a.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per hec­tare, de­pend­ing on the type and qual­ity of the area re­served for pro­mot­ing biod­iversity and the zone, with the aim of en­cour­aging a vari­ety of spe­cies and hab­it­ats;

b.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per hec­tare, de­pend­ing on the type of area re­served for pro­mot­ing biod­iversity, aimed at pro­mot­ing con­nect­ing cor­ridors.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide on the types of areas re­served for pro­mot­ing biod­iversity for which sub­sidies are paid.

³ In the case of cor­ridors that con­nect biod­iversity areas, the Con­fed­er­a­tion shall pay a max­im­um of 90 per cent of the sub­sidies. The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall cov­er the re­main­ing part.

¹ Sub­sidies are paid for the qual­ity of the land­scape in or­der to main­tain, pro­mote and fur­ther de­vel­op a var­ied land­scape.

² The Con­fed­er­a­tion provides fund­ing to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies on a per hec­tare or per nor­mal stock basis if:

a.

the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies or an­oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate re­gion­al agency has set tar­gets and drawn up meas­ures aimed at achiev­ing these tar­gets;

b.

the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and farm­ers have agreed on farm­ing prac­tices cor­res­pond­ing to such meas­ures; and

c.

the tar­gets and meas­ures meet the re­quire­ments for sus­tain­able spa­tial de­vel­op­ment.

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall provide a max­im­um of 90 per cent of the sub­sidies guar­an­teed by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies.

¹ Sub­sidies are paid for pro­duc­tion sys­tems to pro­mote near-nat­ur­al and en­vir­on­ment­ally and an­im­al friendly types of pro­duc­tion. These sub­sidies in­clude:

a.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per hec­tare, de­pend­ing on type of use, for pro­duc­tion meth­ods used throughout the farm;

b.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per hec­tare, de­pend­ing on type of use, for pro­duc­tion meth­ods used on part of the farm;

c.

a gradu­ated pay­ment per live­stock unit, de­pend­ing on the cat­egory of an­im­al, for es­pe­cially an­im­al-friendly meth­ods of pro­duc­tion.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide what types of pro­duc­tion are to be pro­moted.

¹ Sub­sidies for the ef­fi­cient use of re­sources are paid to pro­mote the sus­tain­able use of re­sources such as soil, wa­ter and air, as well as to im­prove ef­fi­ciency with re­gard to the use of aids to pro­duc­tion.

² Sub­sidies are paid for meas­ures aimed at in­tro­du­cing re­source-sav­ing tech­niques or farm­ing meth­ods. Such sub­sidies are of a fixed dur­a­tion only.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide what meas­ures are to be pro­moted. The sub­sidies are paid if:

a.

the meas­ure in ques­tion has been shown to be ef­fect­ive;

b.

the meas­ure in ques­tion shall con­tin­ue to be used once sub­sidies cease;

c.

the meas­ure in ques­tion is eco­nom­ic­ally ac­cept­able for the farm for the fore­see­able fu­ture.

¹ Bridging sub­sidies are paid to en­sure de­vel­op­ment un­der so­cially ac­cept­able terms.

² Bridging sub­sidies are based on the ap­proved cred­its minus sub­sidies un­der Art­icles 71–76, 77a and 77b, and com­pens­at­ory pay­ments un­der Art­icle 62a of the Fed­er­al Act on the Pro­tec­tion of Wa­ters of 24 Janu­ary 1991¹⁰⁹.

³ Bridging sub­sidies are paid per farm. The sub­sidy for the in­di­vidu­al farm is based on the dif­fer­ence between the gen­er­al dir­ect pay­ments be­fore the change of sys­tem and the sub­sidies ac­cord­ing to art­icles 71 para­graph 1 let­ters a–c and 72 after the change of sys­tem. The dif­fer­ence is de­term­ined on the basis of the struc­ture of the farm be­fore the change of sys­tem.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide on:

a.

the cal­cu­la­tion of sub­sidies for in­di­vidu­al farms;

b.

the mod­al­it­ies in the case of trans­fer of own­er­ship of farms and ma­jor struc­tur­al changes;

c.

lim­its in re­la­tion to the tax­able in­come and wealth of the farm­ers above which sub­sidies are re­duced or re­fused, a high­er lim­it be­ing set for mar­ried farm­ers.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall with­in the lim­its of the ap­proved cred­its provide sub­sidies to re­gion­al and branch spe­cif­ic pro­jects aimed at im­prov­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity in the use nat­ur­al re­sources.

² Sub­sidies are gran­ted to the re­spons­ible agency provided:

a.

the meas­ures planned in the pro­ject are co­ordin­ated with each oth­er;

b.

the meas­ures are ex­pec­ted to be­come self-sup­port­ing in the fore­see­able fu­ture.

¹ The level of the sub­sidies is gov­erned by the eco­lo­gic­al and ag­ro­nom­ic ef­fect of the pro­ject, in par­tic­u­lar the in­crease in ef­fi­ciency when us­ing sub­stances and en­ergy. The level amounts to a max­im­um of 80 per cent of the al­low­able costs of real­ising the pro­jects and meas­ures.

² If the Con­fed­er­a­tion sim­ul­tan­eously grants sub­sidies or com­pens­at­ory pay­ments un­der this Act or the Fed­er­al Act of 1 Ju­ly 1966¹¹¹ on the Pro­tec­tion of Nature and Cul­tur­al Her­it­age or com­pens­at­ory pay­ments un­der the Wa­ters Pro­tec­tion Act of 24 Janu­ary 1991¹¹² for the same meas­ures on the same area of land, these sub­sidies or com­pens­at­ory pay­ments shall be de­duc­ted from the al­low­able costs.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide funds to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies for sup­port for farm­ers.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may grant farm­ers sup­port for their farm in or­der to al­le­vi­ate or pre­vent fin­an­cial hard­ship in­curred through no fault of their own or due to changed eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.¹¹⁵

³ In­ter­ven­tion through fed­er­al fund­ing is con­di­tion­al on ap­pro­pri­ate fin­an­cial par­ti­cip­a­tion by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies. Any con­tri­bu­tion from third parties shall be taken in­to ac­count.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies grant sup­port to farm­ers in the form of an in­terest-free loan in or­der to:

a.

re­struc­ture ex­ist­ing debts to re­duce the in­terest pay­able;

b.

tem­por­ar­ily al­le­vi­ate ex­cep­tion­al fin­an­cial li­ab­il­it­ies.

^1bis Farm­ers may also be gran­ted sup­port in the case of a farm­er giv­ing up his or her farm in or­der to con­vert ex­ist­ing loans or man­dat­ory amort­isa­tion in­to an in­terest-free loan in­so­far as the debt is ser­vice­able after such a loan has been gran­ted.¹¹⁶

² The loans are gran­ted based on a rul­ing for a max­im­um of 20 years.

³ If the loan is se­cured by a charge on im­mov­able prop­erty, the pub­lic deed con­tain­ing the pledge agree­ment may be re­placed by a rul­ing from the au­thor­it­ies which guar­an­tees the loan.¹¹⁷

¹ As a rule, loans to sup­port farm­ers un­der the terms of Art­icle 79 para­graph 1 are gran­ted if the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments are met:¹¹⁸

a.¹¹⁹

the farm must provide a liv­ing in the longer term, if ne­ces­sary with a second in­come from out­side the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, and re­quire an ap­pro­pri­ate and at least a nor­mal amount of la­bour;

b.

the farm is be­ing run on an ef­fi­cient basis;

c.

the level of debt after a loan has been gran­ted is ser­vice­able.

² In or­der to en­sure land-use or a suf­fi­cient pop­u­la­tion dens­ity, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may set a lower level of la­bour than that in­dic­ated in para­graph 1 let­ter a for farms in up­land and moun­tain areas.¹²⁰

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late fur­ther re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions.

¹ If a single loan or a loan com­bined with the bal­ance of earli­er loans to sup­port farm­ers and in­vest­ment loans ex­ceeds a cer­tain amount (lim­it), the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall ask for the ap­prov­al of the FO­AG. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil sets the lim­it.

² The FO­AG shall in­form the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies with­in 30 days wheth­er it ap­proves of the de­cision taken or wheth­er it will take a de­cision it­self. Be­fore tak­ing a de­cision it con­sults the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies.

If a farm or part of a farm is sold at a profit, the out­stand­ing bal­ance on the loan must be re­paid.

The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may call in the loan if it has good reas­on to do so.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are li­able for ad­min­is­trat­ive costs.

² They may not charge for ex­penses.

¹ Money re­paid on loans is used by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies for new loans to farm­ers.

² In­terest paid is used, in the fol­low­ing or­der, for:

a.

cov­er­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive costs;

b.

cov­er­ing losses in­curred in grant­ing loans;

c.

fur­ther loans to farm­ers.

³ If the amounts re­paid and in­terest ac­cru­ing to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies ex­ceed the amount re­quired, the FO­AG may:

a.

claim the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s share back and pass it on to an­oth­er can­ton; or

b.

make the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s share of un­used funds avail­able to the can­ton for in­vest­ment loans.¹²²

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall be li­able for losses ac­cru­ing from grant­ing loans that ex­ceed the lim­it in­dic­ated in Art­icle 81, in­clud­ing any leg­al costs, in­so­far as such losses are not covered through in­terest.

² The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are li­able in pro­por­tion to their share of the loan for any losses and leg­al costs ac­cru­ing from grant­ing loans that were ap­proved by the FO­AG un­der the terms of Art­icle 81, in­so­far as such losses are not covered through in­terest.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide sup­port for self-em­ployed farm­ers or their part­ners for re-train­ing in a non-ag­ri­cul­tur­al trade or pro­fes­sion.

² Such sup­port is con­di­tion­al on the ces­sa­tion of farm­ing. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late fur­ther re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions.

³ Sup­port for re-train­ing shall be provided un­til the end of 2019 at the latest.¹²⁴

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant sub­sidies and in­vest­ment loans in or­der to:

a.

lower pro­duc­tion costs through ba­sic im­prove­ments to the farm;

b.

im­prove liv­ing and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in rur­al areas, in par­tic­u­lar up­land and moun­tain areas;

c.

pro­tect farm­land as well as ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings and in­stall­a­tions from dilap­id­a­tion or de­struc­tion through nat­ur­al causes;

d.

help achieve eco­lo­gic­al aims as well as those con­cern­ing an­im­al wel­fare and spa­tial plan­ning;

e.

en­cour­age the ren­a­tur­isa­tion of small lakes and rivers to near-nat­ur­al con­di­tions.

² …¹²⁵

Com­pre­hens­ive com­mun­al meas­ures such as the re­or­gan­isa­tion of real es­tate and the over­all de­vel­op­ment of farm­land are sub­sid­ised if:

a.

they ba­sic­ally cov­er a nat­ur­ally or eco­nom­ic­ally defined area;

b.

they pro­mote eco­lo­gic­al bal­ance and con­nect­ing cor­ridors between bi­otopes.

¹ Meas­ures con­cern­ing in­di­vidu­al farms are sub­sid­ised if the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments are met:

a.¹²⁷

the farm must provide an ex­ist­ence in the longer term, if ne­ces­sary with a second in­come from out­side the ag­ri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, and re­quire an ap­pro­pri­ate and at least a nor­mal amount of la­bour;

b.

the farm must be run on an ef­fi­cient ra­tion­al basis;

c.¹²⁸

the farm must be able to provide proof of eco­lo­gic­al per­form­ance un­der the terms of Art­icle 70a para­graph 2 after the in­vest­ment;

d.¹²⁹

the fund­ing and ac­cept­ab­il­ity of the planned in­vest­ment in view of fu­ture eco­nom­ic con­di­tions must be guar­an­teed;

e.

the ap­plic­ant must con­trib­ute his or her own funds and loans as far as pos­sible;

f.

the ap­plic­ant must have a suit­able train­ing.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may set the la­bour lim­it lower than that stated in para­graph 1, let­ter a:

a.

in or­der to en­sure the farm is op­er­at­ive or to guar­an­tee an ad­equate pop­u­la­tion dens­ity;

b.

in the case of meas­ures aimed at di­ver­si­fy­ing activ­it­ies with­in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al or closely as­so­ci­ated sec­tors.¹³⁰

¹ The pro­ject must be de­signed so as not to com­prom­ise neut­ral­ity in re­la­tion to com­pet­i­tion vis-à-visthe traders in the rel­ev­ant catch­ment area who are dir­ectly af­fected.

² Be­fore the pro­ject is ap­proved, the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies de­cide wheth­er it is neut­ral in re­la­tion to com­pet­i­tion.

³ The dir­ectly af­fected traders in the rel­ev­ant catch­ment area and their pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­isa­tions and branch as­so­ci­ations may be con­sul­ted. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the de­tails.

⁴ Traders who have not lodged an of­fi­cial ob­jec­tion re­gard­ing neut­ral­ity in re­la­tion to com­pet­i­tion with­in the time set out un­der can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion may not do so at a later date.

⁵ If neut­ral­ity in re­la­tion to com­pet­i­tion is con­firmed through a leg­al de­cision, ap­peals may no longer be lodged.

The fed­er­al in­vent­or­ies of ob­jects of na­tion­al im­port­ance are bind­ing in re­la­tion to struc­tur­al im­prove­ments sub­sid­ised by the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

¹ If the farm or a part there­of that is sub­sid­ised is sold at a profit, the vendor must re­pay in­vest­ment loans for in­di­vidu­al meas­ures as fol­lows:¹³²

a.

all loans must be re­paid un­less the last pay­ment was made more than 20 years earli­er;

b.¹³³

any out­stand­ing amounts must be re­paid.

² The pay­ments must be made im­me­di­ately after the sale.

Struc­tur­al im­prove­ments are mon­itored by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies dur­ing work and after com­ple­tion.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant sub­sidies with­in the lim­its of the ap­proved cred­its for:

a.

land im­prove­ment;

b.

ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings;

c.¹³⁴

pro­jects in con­nec­tion with re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment and to pro­mote loc­al and re­gion­al products in which ag­ri­cul­ture plays a ma­jor role;

d.¹³⁵

build­ings for small busi­nesses in moun­tain areas in­so­far as they are for pro­cessing and selling ag­ri­cul­tur­al products and thus add value; such busi­nesses must deal with at least the first stage of pro­cessing;

e.¹³⁶

joint ini­ti­at­ives taken by farm­ers aimed at lower­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

² …¹³⁷

³ Fed­er­al sub­sidies are only gran­ted on con­di­tion that an ap­pro­pri­ate con­tri­bu­tion is made by the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and its pub­lic law ter­rit­ori­al au­thor­it­ies.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions re­lat­ing to the grant­ing of sub­sidies.

¹ Land im­prove­ment in­cludes:

a.

un­der­ground en­gin­eer­ing works and in­stall­a­tions in rur­al areas;

b.

the re­or­gan­isa­tion of land own­er­ship and ten­ancy con­di­tions.

² Ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings in­clude:

a.

farm build­ings;

b.

alpine farms and barns;

c.¹³⁸

com­mun­al build­ings in moun­tain areas that have been erec­ted by farm­ers for pre­par­ing, stor­ing and selling loc­al pro­duce.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall sub­sid­ise up to 40 per cent of the cost of land im­prove­ments. Such costs in­clude ex­pendit­ure for meas­ures that are re­quired un­der the terms of oth­er fed­er­al le­gis­la­tion and are closely con­nec­ted to the sub­sid­ised work.

² In the case of land im­prove­ments in moun­tain areas, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may raise the amount of the sub­sidy to a max­im­um of 50 per cent if such im­prove­ments:

a.

can­not be fun­ded through oth­er means; or

b.

com­prise com­pre­hens­ive com­mun­al works.

³ In the case of land im­prove­ments to re­pair es­pe­cially ser­i­ous dam­age due to ex­cep­tion­al nat­ur­al oc­cur­rences, the Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant a sup­ple­ment­ary sub­sidy of a max­im­um of 20 per cent if the re­quired work can­not be paid for even with an ap­pro­pri­ate con­tri­bu­tion from the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies, the loc­al au­thor­it­ies and pub­lic law funds.

⁴ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant lump-sum sub­sidies for the peri­od­ic re­pair of land im­prove­ment works.¹³⁹

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant lump-sum sub­sidies for new build­ings, con­ver­sions and im­prove­ments to ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings.

² Sub­sidies for build­ings on in­di­vidu­al farms are gran­ted if the own­er of the prop­erty farms him­self or her­self.

³ Sub­sidies for farm build­ings and alpine farms and barns may also be gran­ted to ten­ant farm­ers if they can prove that they have the right to erect or own a build­ing on the land in ques­tion. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late re­quire­ments.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies ap­prove pro­jects in­volving land im­prove­ments, ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment that re­ceive fed­er­al sub­sidies.¹⁴⁰

² They ask the FO­AG for its opin­ion in good time.

³ They make the pro­ject avail­able to the pub­lic and pub­lish it in the of­fi­cial can­ton­al gaz­ette is not re­quired for pro­jects that do not re­quire a con­ces­sion or plan­ning per­mis­sion un­der fed­er­al or can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion.¹⁴¹

⁴ They give or­gan­isa­tions that play a le­git­im­ate role in re­la­tion to the pro­tec­tion of nature and cul­tur­al her­it­age, the en­vir­on­ment or pub­lic hik­ing paths an op­por­tun­ity to lodge an ob­jec­tion con­cern­ing the pro­jects pub­lished in the of­fi­cial can­ton­al gaz­ette.¹⁴²

⁵ If ne­ces­sary, the FO­AG con­sults oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies whose scope of activ­ity also cov­ers the pro­ject. It in­forms the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies of the re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions en­tailed in the grant­ing of a sub­sidy for that pro­ject.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­cides which pro­jects should not be passed on to the FO­AG for its opin­ion.

⁷ The FO­AG shall de­cide wheth­er or not to grant a sub­sidy only after the pro­ject has entered in­to ef­fect.¹⁴³

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant sub­sidies to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies as part of pro­gramme agree­ments.

² The fed­er­al agen­cies in­volved add their ob­lig­a­tions and con­di­tions to the pro­gramme agree­ments.

³ The pro­ced­ure for ap­prov­ing pro­jects to be sub­sidies by pay­ments through pro­gramme agree­ments is sub­ject to can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion.

The Fed­er­al As­sembly shall by simple fed­er­al de­cree ap­prove a mul­tiple-year guar­an­tee cred­it in or­der to guar­an­tee the con­tri­bu­tions un­der Art­icle 93 para­graph 1.

¹ The own­ers of land, works or in­stall­a­tions that are sub­sid­ised must ac­cept con­nec­tions with oth­er works if ap­pro­pri­ate in view of nat­ur­al and tech­nic­al cir­cum­stances.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall de­cide on such con­nec­tions as well as ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion for the use of ex­ist­ing works in­so­far as such com­pens­a­tion is jus­ti­fied.

The can­ton­al gov­ern­ment may or­der land re­ap­por­tion­ment if the in­terests of ag­ri­cul­ture are af­fected by pub­lic works or land-use plan­ning.

¹ Sev­er­al land-own­ers may agree in writ­ing on the re­ap­por­tion­ment of land. Such an agree­ment should in­dic­ate the prop­er­ties that are in­cluded in the re­ap­por­tion­ment and must provide for the set­tle­ment of any bur­dens on the prop­er­ties as well as the shar­ing of costs.

² Can­ton­al ap­prov­al of the re­ap­por­tion­ment shall re­place the pub­lic deed con­tain­ing the agree­ment on the trans­fer of own­er­ship. The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may not levy any taxes on the trans­fer of own­er­ship or sim­il­ar charges.

³ Art­icle 802 of the Swiss Civil Code¹⁴⁷ ap­plies to the trans­fer of charges im­mov­able prop­erty and Art­icle 954 para­graph 2 of the Swiss Civil Code ap­plies to entries in the land re­gister.

⁴ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are re­spons­ible for fur­ther pro­ced­ures.

¹ Prop­er­ties, works and in­stall­a­tions, and ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings that have been im­proved through fed­er­al sub­sidies may not be used for any oth­er pur­pose dur­ing a 20-year peri­od after the last pay­ment of the fed­er­al sub­sidy; moreover, land that has been in­cluded in a re­ap­por­tion­ment may not be split up in­to smal­ler prop­er­ties.

² Any per­son who breaches this ban on change of use or par­cel­la­tion must re­pay the sub­sidy re­ceived from the Con­fed­er­a­tion and re­pair any dam­age that has been done.

³ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may al­low ex­cep­tions to the ban on change of use and par­cel­la­tion if good reas­on can be shown. They de­cide wheth­er the sub­sidies paid out should be re­paid in full or in part or wheth­er re­pay­ment should be waived.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies veri­fy wheth­er, after struc­tur­al im­prove­ments sub­sid­ised by the Con­fed­er­a­tion have been car­ried out:

a.

cul­tiv­ated land and un­cul­tiv­ated buf­fer strips and bi­otopes are be­ing used ap­pro­pri­ately;

b.

works, in­stall­a­tions and ag­ri­cul­tur­al build­ings are be­ing main­tained in good or­der.

² In the case of gross neg­lect re­gard­ing farm­ing or main­ten­ance, as well as in­ap­pro­pri­ate care, the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may be re­quired to de­mand re­pay­ment of the sub­sidies. The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may take re­course against the re­cip­i­ents.

¹ Entries shall be made in the land re­gister con­cern­ing the ban on change of use and di­vi­sion, the man­dat­ory main­ten­ance and ap­pro­pri­ate use and the re­pay­ment ob­lig­a­tion.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall in­form the land re­gistry ex of­fi­cio.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may al­low ex­cep­tions re­gard­ing the man­dat­ory entries in the land re­gister. It shall also reg­u­late on the de­le­tion of such entries.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall provide funds for in­vest­ment loans to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies for:

a.

meas­ures for in­di­vidu­al farms;

b.

com­mun­al meas­ures;

c.¹⁴⁸

build­ings and in­stall­a­tions for small busi­nesses.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall grant in­terest-free in­vest­ment loans in a rul­ing.

³ Loans must be re­paid with­in 20 years at the most. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails.

⁴ If the loan is se­cured by a charge on real es­tate, the or­der from the au­thor­it­ies grant­ing the loan may re­place the pub­lic deed con­tain­ing the pledge agree­ment.¹⁴⁹

¹ Own­ers who run their own farms or will do so after in­vest­ment re­ceive in­vest­ment loans:¹⁵⁰

a.

as one-time start-up sup­port for young farm­ers;

b.

for the con­struc­tion, con­ver­sion and im­prove­ment of res­id­en­tial and farm build­ings;

c.¹⁵¹

for meas­ures aimed at di­ver­si­fy­ing activ­it­ies in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and closely as­so­ci­ated sec­tors in or­der to provide po­ten­tial sources of ad­di­tion­al in­come;

d.¹⁵²

for meas­ures aimed at im­prov­ing the pro­duc­tion of spe­cial crops and ad­apt­ing them to the mar­ket, as well as for re­new­ing long-term crops.

² Ten­ant farm­ers re­ceive in­vest­ment loans:

a.

as one-time start-up sup­port for young farm­ers;

b.

for the pur­chase of farms from third parties;

c.

for the con­struc­tion, con­ver­sion and im­prove­ment of res­id­en­tial and farm build­ings on con­di­tion that the right to erect or own a build­ing on the land in ques­tion can be demon­strated, or if the ten­ancy agree­ment is entered in the land re­gister for the fixed dur­a­tion of the loan ac­cord­ing to Art­icle 290 of the Swiss Code of Ob­lig­a­tions¹⁵³ and the land own­er pledges the ob­ject of the ten­ancy agree­ment as se­cur­ity for the loan;

d.¹⁵⁴

for meas­ures aimed at di­ver­si­fy­ing activ­it­ies in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and closely as­so­ci­ated sec­tors in or­der to provide po­ten­tial sources of ad­di­tion­al in­come, in­so­far as the con­di­tions set out un­der let­ter c are met;

e.¹⁵⁵

for meas­ures aimed at im­prov­ing the pro­duc­tion of spe­cial crops and ad­apt­ing them to the mar­ket as well as for the re­new­al of long-term crops in­so­far as the con­di­tions un­der let­ter c are met.

³ In­vest­ment loans are gran­ted as lump-sums.

⁴ Un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 4 Oc­to­ber 1974¹⁵⁶ on the Pro­mo­tion of Hous­ing Con­struc­tion and Home Own­er­ship and the Fed­er­al Act of 20 March 1970¹⁵⁷, on the Im­prove­ment of Liv­ing Con­di­tions in Alpine Re­gions, fin­an­cial as­sist­ance may also be sought, in ad­di­tion to in­vest­ment loans, for res­id­en­tial build­ings.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions and al­low ex­cep­tions to the rule of own­er/farm­er and stip­u­late the grant­ing of lump-sum in­vest­ment loans.¹⁵⁸

¹ In­vest­ment loans are gran­ted in par­tic­u­lar for:

a.

land im­prove­ments;

b.¹⁵⁹

build­ings, in­stall­a­tions and ma­chinery erec­ted or pur­chased by farm­ers for joint self-help pro­jects in or­der to ra­tion­al­ise their op­er­a­tions, to fa­cil­it­ate the pre­par­a­tion, stor­age and mar­ket­ing of loc­al pro­duce or to pro­duce en­ergy from bio­mass;

c.¹⁶⁰

set­ting up ag­ri­cul­tur­al self-help or­gan­isa­tions for mar­ket-ori­ent­ated pro­duc­tion and man­age­ment;

d.¹⁶¹

re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­jects and pro­jects aimed at pro­mot­ing loc­al and re­gion­al products in which ag­ri­cul­ture plays a ma­jor role.

² In the case of lar­ger pro­jects, sup­port may be gran­ted in the form of build­ing loans.¹⁶²

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions.

¹ In­vest­ment loans are gran­ted for build­ings and in­stall­a­tions for small busi­nesses in­so­far as they pro­cess and sell ag­ri­cul­tur­al products, thus in­creas­ing their ad­ded value; the busi­nesses must be in­volved at least in the first stage of pro­cessing.¹⁶⁴

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late re­quire­ments and ob­lig­a­tions.

¹ If a single loan or a loan com­bined with the bal­ance of earli­er in­vest­ment loans and fin­an­cial sup­port ex­ceeds a cer­tain sum (lim­it), the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall sub­mit their de­cision to the FO­AG for ap­prov­al. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­cides on the lim­it.

^1bis The FO­AG de­cides wheth­er to grant an in­vest­ment loan only when the pro­ject has come in­to ef­fect.¹⁶⁵

² The FO­AG shall in­form the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies with­in 30 days wheth­er it ap­proves the de­cision or not.¹⁶⁶

³ If sup­port is gran­ted in the form of a build­ing loan as per Art­icle 107 para­graph 2, the bal­ance of earli­er loans is not taken in­to ac­count.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may call in an in­vest­ment loan if they have good cause for do­ing so.

² In cases of hard­ship, in­terest may be charged on the loan in­stead of call­ing it in.

¹ The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall use re­pay­ments of loans and in­terest for new in­vest­ment loans.

² If the amounts paid back to the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and the in­terest ex­ceed their needs, the FO­AG may:

a.

call in the un­wanted amounts and pass them on to an­oth­er can­ton; or

b.

make them avail­able to the can­ton for fin­an­cial sup­port.

The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are li­able for losses in­curred in con­nec­tion with in­vest­ment loans, in­clud­ing any leg­al costs.

The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies are li­able for ad­min­is­trat­ive ex­penses.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion sup­ports ag­ri­cul­ture in its ef­forts to pro­duce in a ra­tion­al and sus­tain­able man­ner through the ac­quis­i­tion and pro­vi­sion of know­ledge.

² An ap­pro­pri­ate pro­por­tion of fund­ing is used for types of pro­duc­tion that are par­tic­u­larly near-nat­ur­al and en­vir­on­ment­ally and an­im­al friendly.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may op­er­ate ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search sta­tions.

² The ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search sta­tions are loc­ated in vari­ous parts of the coun­try.

³ They re­port to the FO­AG.

¹ The ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search sta­tions have as­signed the fol­low­ing tasks in par­tic­u­lar:¹⁷²

a.

to pro­cess sci­entif­ic find­ings and the tech­nic­al prin­ciples for ag­ri­cul­tur­al prac­tice, edu­ca­tion and ad­vis­ory ser­vices;

b.

to draw up sci­entif­ic prin­ciples for ag­ri­cul­tur­al de­cision-mak­ing;

c.

to de­vel­op, su­per­vise and as­sess ag­ri­cul­tur­al meas­ures;

d.

to draw up ba­sic prin­ciples for new strategies in ag­ri­cul­ture;

e.

to draw up ba­sic prin­ciples for en­vir­on­ment­ally and an­im­al-friendly types of pro­duc­tion;

f.

to carry out im­ple­ment­a­tion du­ties.

² …¹⁷³

¹ The FO­AG may en­trust in­sti­tutes be­long­ing to fed­er­al and can­ton­al uni­versit­ies or oth­er in­sti­tutes with re­search man­dates. It may sign peri­od­ic ser­vice agree­ments with pub­lic or private or­gan­isa­tions.¹⁷⁵

² The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide fin­an­cial sup­port for ex­per­i­ments and in­vest­ig­a­tions car­ried out by or­gan­isa­tions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ap­point the Ag­ri­cul­tur­al Re­search Stand­ing Com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing a max­im­um of 15 mem­bers. In­ter­ested parties, in par­tic­u­lar pro­du­cers, con­sumers and sci­ent­ists, must be pro­por­tion­ally rep­res­en­ted on the Re­search Com­mit­tee.¹⁷⁶

² The Re­search Com­mit­tee shall provide the FO­AG with re­com­mend­a­tions on ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search, in par­tic­u­lar for its long-term plan­ning.

¹ Ad­vis­ory ser­vices are in­ten­ded for people em­ployed in ag­ri­cul­ture, house­hold man­age­ment in ag­ri­cul­ture, ag­ri­cul­tur­al or­gan­isa­tions or in the de­vel­op­ment of rur­al areas, as well as in en­sur­ing and pro­mot­ing the qual­ity of ag­ri­cul­tur­al products. Such people are sup­por­ted in their pro­fes­sion­al work and in re­la­tion to their fur­ther pro­fes­sion­al train­ing.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies provide ad­vis­ory ser­vices at a can­ton­al level.

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion provides fin­an­cial as­sist­ance with­in the lim­its of the ap­proved cred­its for ad­vis­ory ser­vices to supra-re­gion­al or na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions or in­sti­tu­tions that are act­ive in spe­cial areas, as well as to na­tion­al ad­vis­ory of­fices.

^3bis The Con­fed­er­a­tion may sup­port pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tions for com­mun­al pro­ject ini­ti­at­ives.¹⁸⁰

⁴ Sup­port is provided for ad­vis­ory activ­it­ies aimed at pro­mot­ing the ex­change of know­ledge, in­form­a­tion and ex­per­i­ence between re­search­ers and those work­ing in the field, between ag­ri­cul­tur­al busi­nesses and those men­tioned in para­graph 1. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall draw up de­tails con­cern­ing areas of activ­ity and types of ser­vices.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the re­quire­ments for the or­gan­isa­tions, in­sti­tu­tions and ad­vis­ory of­fices and the ad­visors em­ployed by them.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may pro­mote the breed­ing of com­mer­cial plants which:

a.

are of high eco­lo­gic­al value;

b.

are of high qual­ity; or

c.

have been ad­ap­ted to the con­di­tions pre­vail­ing in the vari­ous parts of the coun­try.

² It may provide sub­sidies for private plant breed­ers and spe­cial­ised or­gan­isa­tions that provide ser­vices for the gen­er­al good, namely for:

a.

breed­ing, main­tain­ing the pur­ity of and im­prov­ing vari­et­ies;

b.

ex­per­i­ment­al cul­tiv­a­tion;

c.¹⁸⁴

…

³ It may sub­sid­ise the pro­duc­tion of seeds and seed­lings.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may pro­mote the breed­ing of live­stock which:

a.

is ad­ap­ted to the nat­ur­al con­di­tions pre­vail­ing;

b.¹⁸⁵

is healthy, pro­duct­ive and res­ist­ant; and

c.

leads to the mar­ket-ori­ent­ated and low-cost pro­duc­tion of high-qual­ity meat products.

² The pro­mo­tion of live­stock breed­ing should en­sure high-qual­ity in­de­pend­ent an­im­al hus­bandry.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may provide sub­sidies to re­cog­nised or­gan­isa­tions, in par­tic­u­lar for:

a.

keep­ing stud-books, test­ing per­form­ance and as­sess­ing breed­ing value;

b.

pro­grammes aimed at pro­mot­ing per­form­ance and qual­ity as well as at im­prov­ing the qual­ity and health of live­stock;

c.¹⁸⁶

…

² No sub­sidies are paid for breed­ing trans­gen­ic an­im­als.

Sub­sidies are gran­ted if:

a.¹⁸⁷

…

b.

the breed­ers ad­opt reas­on­able self-help meas­ures and help to fund pro­mo­tion­al activ­it­ies; and

c.

the meas­ures pro­moted com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al norms.

¹ The FO­AG re­cog­nises the or­gan­isa­tions. …¹⁸⁸

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the re­quire­ments.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in­tro­duce re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to breed­ing and gene­a­logy for the im­port­ing of an­im­als for breed­ing, sperm, ova and em­bry­os.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing the breed­ing, im­port­ing or cir­cu­la­tion of ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied live­stock.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall main­tain a na­tion­al stud farm for the pur­poses of sup­port­ing horse-breed­ing.¹⁹²

² The FO­AG is re­spons­ible for the stud farm.

³ …¹⁹³

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may en­cour­age the main­ten­ance and the sus­tain­able use of ge­net­ic re­sources. It may keep ge­net­ic banks and main­ten­ance re­gisters or may man­date an­oth­er agency to do so and sub­sid­ise meas­ures such as in situ main­ten­ance in par­tic­u­lar.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may stip­u­late re­quire­ments re­gard­ing ge­net­ic banks, main­ten­ance re­gisters, meas­ures and en­ti­tle­ment to sub­sidies. It shall draw up cri­ter­ia for the al­loc­a­tion of sub­sidies.

In­so­far as in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments ex­ist, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late ac­cess to ge­net­ic re­sources and the al­loc­a­tion of ad­vant­ages arising from the use of such re­sources.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall draw up reg­u­la­tions for pre­vent­ing dam­age caused by harm­ful or­gan­isms as well as by the cir­cu­la­tion of in­ap­pro­pri­ate aids to pro­duc­tion.

² In do­ing so it shall take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the re­quire­ments of product safety.¹⁹⁷

¹ If the sci­entif­ic in­form­a­tion is in­suf­fi­cient to fully as­sess the risks per­tain­ing to aids to pro­duc­tion or plant ma­ter­i­al that may carry par­tic­u­larly dan­ger­ous harm­ful or­gan­isms, pre­vent­ive meas­ures may be taken if:

a.

it is sus­pec­ted that the aids to pro­duc­tion or plant ma­ter­i­al may have un­desir­able side-ef­fects on the health of hu­mans, an­im­als, plants or the en­vir­on­ment; and

b.

it is highly likely that such side-ef­fects will oc­cur or that the con­sequences there­of could be far-reach­ing.

² Pre­vent­ive meas­ures must be re-ex­amined and mod­i­fied with­in an ap­pro­pri­ate time-frame in ac­cord­ance with the latest sci­entif­ic find­ings.

³ With re­gard to pre­vent­ive meas­ures, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

re­strict, is­sue con­di­tions for or ban the im­port­ing, cir­cu­la­tion and use of aids to pro­duc­tion;

b.

re­strict, is­sue con­di­tions for or ban the im­port­ing and cir­cu­la­tion of plant ma­ter­i­al and goods that may carry par­tic­u­larly dan­ger­ous harm­ful or­gan­isms.