Where is urban food policy in Switzerland? A frame analysis

Abstract

Food is increasingly included on the urban agenda in many countries, and comprehensive food policies have been developed in several cities, but the development of articulate urban food policies is still in its infancy in Switzerland. The goal of this paper is to explore the ways in which food is framed in official policies in Switzerland and thereby gain a better understanding of the potential for the development of urban food policies. The analysis is based on a case study approach focusing on the formal frames of food: reconstructed from official policy documents on agriculture, food, health, environment, and planning, at the federal and the local level. The results show that ‘urban food’ is not a major topic in most policy documents and that the dominant frame of food is economic. There is a clear distinction between the rural and the urban, and there were no frames integrating (rural) food production and (urban) consumption, across the city’s departments, or between the local and the federal level. We can conclude that there is not yet a comprehensive urban food policy in Switzerland. The analysis further allows the nomination of two possible pathways to guide the development of coherent and integrative urban food policies.