For fewer traffic jams, farmers like Urs and Pirmin Bobst from Oensingen lose SO valuable agricultural land: their onion field has to make way for the highway

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Pirmin Bobst (49) has long been used to the noise. From early morning to late evening, an average of 90,000 cars and trucks speed past his farm in Oensingen SO. Or they crawl.

The A1 between Härkingen and Luterbach is one of the busiest road sections in Switzerland. There are traffic jams for about three hours a day. Five years ago, the federal government decided to expand the highway from four to six lanes. The project has been legally binding for a few weeks now. For farmer Bobst this means: Where onions and garlic now grow, 40-ton trucks will soon rumble over the asphalt. Over a length of 800 meters, arable land is being lost due to the highway.

5.3 billion for new songs

Many farmers are like Bobst. The A1 in the Gäu, between Jurasüdfuss and Aare, is lined with fields. In total, the expansion will result in the loss of an area equivalent to approximately 16 football fields. Valuable agricultural land must also make way for further tracks in other regions of Switzerland. Parliament has just decided to release 5.3 billion francs for wider roads. Almost a billion more than the Federal Council had planned for the next expansion step.

The money will be used, among other things, to expand another section of the A1, the section between Bern-Wankdorf and Schönbühl BE, from six to eight lanes. In September, the National Council also accepted a proposal from SVP National Councilor Erich Hess (42), calling for a general expansion of the A1 between Bern and Zurich, as well as Lausanne and Geneva, to six lanes.

The highway – a blessing and a curse at the same time

More lanes, less traffic jams – that’s what supporters are hoping for. Pirmin Bobst, the largest onion onion producer in the country, also realizes that things cannot continue like this. Alternative traffic has increased dramatically in recent years. “There used to be traffic jams in the village every now and then, now every day,” he says.

Bobst is the fourth generation to run the farm. His father Urs Bobst (76) can still remember what Oensingen looked like before the east-west axis cut through the village. Perhaps that is why it is more difficult for him and his son to accept that in a few years the excavators will come up and cover the onion field with concrete.

Pirmin Bobst also regards the loss of all agricultural land as a ‘catastrophe’. In recent years, farmers in the region have organized bonfires, written an open letter to then Transport Minister Simonetta Sommaruga (63) and fought for a solution in the cantonal parliament. But Bobst also says, “The bottom line is that the highway has brought us prosperity. We also farm.”

Farmers receive compensation

It’s not just the extra traces of arable land that cost money. A lot is coming together in the Gäu: the planned renaturation of the Dünn, which flows parallel to the A1, a planned ring road and a huge construction project by Migros also have consequences for farmers in the region.

Farmers receive compensation for any land they lose as a result of federal or cantonal projects. However, not money, but land. The so-called land redistribution is complicated. “Samples are taken from all plots and soil points are distributed,” explains Pirmin Bobst. If the land on the new field has fewer points, the farmer gets slightly more land. The exchange is possible because the canton and the federal government have land in the area. Those who work these fields today are literally pawn victims.

“We are a bit lucky”

“We are a bit lucky that we can solve it this way,” says Bobst. He thinks the solution is fair. Nearly two-thirds of the 124 affected property owners voted in favor during an initial meeting in September.

Transport Minister Albert Rösti (56) wants to do everything he can to offer farmers land in exchange for so-called crop rotation areas, especially valuable arable land. Although he admits that this “may not be possible in all respects”. The Federal Roads Office (Astra) itself only has a small amount of agricultural land that can be exchanged. You have to rely on cantons and municipalities, says Astra spokesperson Thomas Rohrbach.

If land exchange is not possible and an amicable solution is not reached, the farmers are expropriated. For the land taken from them, they receive federal compensation determined by a special court.

Agricultural areas are shrinking

But even if farmers get new ones for the land they lost, the agricultural land that was landfilled for the new tracks will be gone. Between 1985 and 2018, agricultural land in Switzerland shrank by seven percent. Highways and other roads required 15 percent more space in the same period.

It is a development that worries Solothurn farmer Pirmin Bobst. With all the land being lost, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce enough food. And then not only the farmers, but everyone would be the losers.

Source:Blick