An evaluation of Swiss agriculture’s contribution to food security with decision support system for food security strategy

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the domestic agriculture’s contribution to food security in the case of missing imports of food and feed to the food supplies of the country.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses the Decision Support System for food Security Strategy and Supply Management (DSS-ESSA) to simulate whether a country with as low a level of self-sufficiency (around 60 per cent) as Switzerland would theoretically be capable of supplying its own population with a sufficient quantity of domestically produced food. The authors try to estimate the short-term and long-term impacts of the missing imports of food and feed on the energy supply in Switzerland.

Findings

Findings are summarised as follows. Starting with the long-term impact, the results show that in the long-term an energy supply of 2,340 kcal/person/day would be possible if the appropriate available cultivated area and optimised production existed. However, in the short-time, the potential and the time required to adapt and expand agricultural production depends primarily on the crop-rotation land available and on the existing infrastructure.

Research limitations/implications

In the present version of DSS-ESSA no economic and environmental module has been integrated.

Originality/value

The current model version has been funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture and aims at supporting Swiss policy-makers to guide changes. Numerous additional data such as technical production contexts are regularly checked by experts.

Citation

Ferjani, A., Mann, S. and Zimmermann, A. (2018), "An evaluation of Swiss agriculture’s contribution to food security with decision support system for food security strategy", British Food Journal, Vol. 120 No. 9, pp. 2116-2128. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-12-2017-0709