Agriculture Farmers want to boycott the federal government's digitization project

Farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs have called for a boycott of the Federal Office for Agriculture's (FOAG) "Digiflux" digitization project. The farms and around 200 private individuals from the "nichtszumelden.ch" association do not want to provide any data to the new federal portal.

The Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER), which is superior to the FOAG, confirmed an article in the "NZZ am Sonntag" newspaper at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency.

"The whole thing is a resistance against the excesses and the control mania of the officials," said Kilian Zwick, founding member and president of the association in the article. On the farm and on the farm, the administrative workload is growing every year and has reached an unbearable level.

The "Digiflux" tool will now record the entire Swiss flow of goods for pesticides, fertilizers and animal feed. All data must be recorded digitally, from the retailer to the farmer. This also applies to horticultural and forestry businesses. The aim is to create a complete overview of when and where pesticides and additives are used in Switzerland.

The first farms to use the tool are convinced. "However, I assume that everyone will comply with the law and do not want to speculate about a different scenario today," Christian Hofer, Director of the FOAG, was quoted as saying in the article. Farmers are already required to keep documentation. "Digiflux" could relieve the administrative burden on farms and reduce the flood of paperwork.

SDA