AGRARIAN PROJECT—Commoning Land and Labour around Zurich

Abstract

The studio wants to interrogate this hidden and pervasive partitioning of the Swiss territory resulting in the divide between the so-called rural and the urban: Can we weave the seemingly disconnected worlds of agriculture and urban living together? Can we imagine cooperatives and commons on farms and in villages that promise optimistic and attractive ways of living and working in the countryside?

Objective

The semester consists of investigative journeys and intensive studio sessions. Architecture of Territory values intellectual curiosity, commitment and team spirit. We are looking for avid travellers, motivated to make strong and independent contributions. Students will learn to apply a range of methods and sources pertaining to territory, including ethnographic fieldwork, literature research and essay writing, drawing techniques, videography, and online publishing. Students work in groups of two to four.

Content

The first track of our investigation concerns land labour: Who will work the land around Zurich in the future? Farmer’s numbers have dwindled steadily since decades: Today they make up just 1.1 % of the population of the Canton. Most of them run family businesses faced with long working hours, low incomes, absence of social benefits and social recognition, and pushed into a risky reliance on direct payments, automation, chemical fixes and the use of seasonal labour. Research has shown that in contrast to such model of intensive monoculture production, a pathway of diversity of a landscape, whether biological or cultural, and of better quality of food, requires more human work, and more care. Post-growth economists are convinced that “if agriculture is to be practiced according to ecological and social principles ... more people will have to work in agriculture again.” (Seidl et al.) How can we make such change possible? The second track of our investigation concerns the questions of land property. The crisis of agriculture linked to the capitalist land-use regulation currently favours commodification of land, intensification of production and an ever-increasing size of farms over time. One of the strictest land laws in Europe, the Swiss Bundesgesetz über das bäuerliche Bodenrecht, regulates the agricultural land market by maintaining fixed land prices at low levels to promote farmer land ownership. Owning or buying land in Switzerland is only possible for professional farmers within 10 km radius from their place of residence, making it hard or impossible for landless or aspiring farmers to acquire land and enter agricultural practice. In contrast to this condition, historic and contemporary practices of commoning offer a different picture. Private ownership of farmland in Switzerland is a relatively recent phenomenon. The common lands, Allmende, have for centuries constituted a prevalent form governing common pool resources including land, forest and water. Many recent initiatives explore similar land-sharing models and other types of resource pooling. In the studio, we will follow such examples in order to create novel and attractive spaces of living and working in the countryside based on the governance of common pool resources. At the start of the semester we will study precedents of agrarian communities and spaces—from kibbutzim in Israel, Das grüne Manifest by Leberecht Migge, to contemporary practices of community-supported agriculture in Switzerland. In a second step, through intensive fieldwork during the seminar week in six select communities in the vicinity of the city of Zurich, we will engage with farmers, workers and experts. Ultimately, we will synthesise our findings to create an agrarian project exploring an optimistic future for the countryside of Zurich based on the ideas of social solidarity and the common good.

Resources