20.12.2025
Old Bread Isn’t Hard — No Bread Is Hard
Low prices are king - in Switzerland too. In mid-October, Lidl and Aldi lowered the price of certain one-pound loaves to 99 rappen. A journalistic bombshell. Many people asked themselves: Can this work out economically? Apparently it can. Because the response from the retail giants Migros and Coop didn’t take long: they, too, now offer one-pound loaves for just one franc.
But the price war has long been raging beyond bread. Over the past year, Migros has reduced the prices of more than 1,000 products. At Coop, the Prix Garantie product line is booming.
And Lidl and Aldi continue to grow — thanks to low prices that are more in demand in Switzerland than ever.
Perceived purchasing power in Switzerland is declining. In a country where so many things are becoming more expensive, affordable food is turning into a central need for many people. This is also visible in places where social hardship concentrates: soup kitchens, food distributions, aid organizations. More and more people have to queue there because even shopping at a discounter is hardly possible anymore. Especially in Advent, many become more aware of what it must mean when daily bread is not a given.
Yet the low prices at the checkout tell only half the story. For bread, potatoes, or apples to remain inexpensive, it takes an agriculture sector that can still produce these goods efficiently in the first place. That is precisely where our producers are coming under increasing pressure — from extreme weather, new pests, higher costs, and ever stricter regulations. The current retail price war must therefore not distract from the fact that low-cost food will only remain possible if the framework conditions for producing it are right.
As easy as that? Not at all.
Because behind every kilo of potatoes, every apple, and every piece of bread stands agriculture — which must deal every day with extreme weather conditions, new pests, and political pressure. In Switzerland, food production is being made harder by ever stricter regulations. In hardly any other country is the approval of plant protection products so restrictive. Many active substances that are permitted in the EU have been banned in Switzerland or were never approved here in the first place. The consequence is that farmers now have few or no effective tools regularly available to them for certain crops.
In emergencies, fruit and vegetable producers apply for emergency authorizations. These applications have already increased strikingly in 2024. And they have continued to rise in 2025. If the pheromone traps prove ineffective, allowing the peach moth to continue spreading and infesting other crops such as apples and pears, the only option left to the fruit growers' association is to apply for emergency approval. The vegetable association faces a similar situation for a product permitted even in organic farming to disrupt the tomato leaf miner moth — a product that is approved through the regular process in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and Austria, but not in Switzerland.
This is why the current debate about adjusting the Waters Protection Ordinance has attracted attention.
At the end of November, Federal Councillor Rösti presented the revision of the Waters Protection Act and the Waters Protection Ordinance, and at the same time opened the consultation procedures for both proposals.
The Federal Council wants to introduce limit values for seven additional pesticide active substances. For three further active substances, it is for the time being refraining from new limit values, “because these products are currently practically the only possibility to be able to produce at all.”
There are currently no alternatives for these. And “you can’t switch from one day to the next: for example with rapeseed, potatoes, or sugar beets, you would otherwise have major problems.”
The Federal Council’s decision exemplifies the difficult balancing act: how do we protect our nature — and at the same time our food security? Federal Councillor Rösti put it succinctly, in essence: a long-term solution requires technical progress, better wastewater treatment plants, and innovation — but until then, farmers must be able to work with the tools they have today.
There is a refreshing sobriety in this assessment. And above all, it is an assessment that takes conflicting goals seriously. It is encouraging that this comprehensive view is also shared by the approval authority and has been expressed publicly — as recently by Michael Beer, Deputy Director of the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO), on Agrarpolitik – Der Podcast. There, he clearly explains the complex approval process for plant protection products, the testing with regard to environmental and health protection, and emphasises that plant protection products are not applied for fun — and that their effectiveness against harmful organisms must therefore also be demonstrated.
Because ultimately, this is not only about farmers. It is about all of us. Crops that cannot be protected efficiently become more expensive — or disappear entirely from Swiss fields and farmland. Yet regional products remain important for Swiss consumers, as studies repeatedly show. That is why pragmatic solutions are needed: plant protection products must be approved on a risk-based basis, not prevented ideologically; technical innovations — such as field analyses and precision applications — must be pushed forward so that agriculture can produce what society expects from it.
What is needed is a policy that takes security of supply seriously and creates the framework conditions that allow our producers to fulfill their task: producing affordable food for all of us. In the winter session, the National Council took an important step toward faster approval of plant protection products by adopting the amendment to the Agriculture Act. One can only hope that the Council of States will take the next step.
Christmas invites us to pause, and the many calls for donations remind us that prosperity and supply are not a given. If we want all people to retain access to affordable food, we must set the framework conditions so that agriculture — in Switzerland and globally — can fulfill its mandate. Because: “You’ve got a million problems until you are hungry. Then you only have one problem.”
Or, put differently: “Old bread isn’t hard. No bread — that’s hard,” as an old saying goes. Forward-looking policy ensures that Switzerland can still bake its own bread tomorrow — fresh, good, affordable for everyone, and above all using its own raw materials.
We wish you happy holidays,
Your swiss-food editorial team
