PROJECT-SUPPORT SWITZERLAND

Association Global-Field Switzerland, Basel, Switzerland

Country / Places

Switzerland: Global-Field in Attiswil, Bern und Nuglar

Global-Field Attiswil / www.weltacker-attiswil.ch
A 2000m² global field was created on the Bleuerhof in Attiswil in spring 2019. Anyone who walks across the organic farm at the southern foot of the Jura will discover diverse crops, small structures for animals such as branch or rock piles, flowering strips, and bee pastures. It's about soil and biodiversity, climate change, cycles, natural resources, global justice, agriculture, and good food.

Global-Field Bern / www.weltacker-bern.ch
The Global-Field Bern is located at INFORAMA Rütti in Zollikofen, the vocational training and competence center for agriculture of the Canton of Bern. The tenant family of the estate provides the necessary arable land. A core team comprised of those responsible for the field, education and communication is also responsible for the implementation of the educational project.  

Global-Field Nuglar / www.nuglargaerten.ch
Since 2017, the first Swiss Global-Field has been located in the idyllic Swiss village of Nuglar, near Basel. The 2000m² global field is jointly supported by the association Nuglar Gardens, the Urban Agriculture Network Basel, and the association Global-Field Switzerland. The Nuglar Gardens is a solidarity-based agriculture that cultivates a variety of vegetables, fruits, berries and herbs on 6 hectares of land in a biodynamic way.

General

If one divides the world's arable land by the number of people on earth, each person gets 2000m². This is the share of arable land to which we are all arithmetically entitled. What nourishes and provides for us must grow on it: wheat for bread, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, maize, soya as fodder for animals, sugar beet for the sugar in tea or coffee, cotton for T-shirts, sunflowers for cooking oil, and rapeseed for agrofuel. This 2000m² area also feeds many micro-organisms, without which the soil would not be fertile, as well as all kinds of worms, insects, birds, mice, and who knows who else.

Project-support

Education project 'More beans in the field and on the plate’

The three Swiss Global-Fields in Attiswil, Bern and Nuglar will focus on the bean in 2022/23, in addition to the existing variety. Stories, recipes - but also practical knowledge about cultivation, seed collection, as well as processing and storage, will be shown. A varied programme with school modules and events lets one marvel at the diversity of beans.

In many countries, beans have lost their once important status in the garden, in agriculture and in nutrition. Yet, as indigenous legumes, they offer an answer to many of the problems of our future: they provide valuable vegetable protein without burdening the Co2 balance. They produce their own nitrogen fertiliser. And as insect food they ensure the survival of honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies. So it is high time that diverse beans find their way back into our gardens and onto our plates.

Accompanying the practical experiences in the field, the website www.weltacker-attiswil.ch/bohnen brings together all kinds of bean knowledge. This includes information on the international "global beans" project, in which more than 40 bean partners from 15 countries have come together to advocate for legumes.