History of Swiss Tobacco.

In 1697, a mercenary from Dutch services brought tobacco seeds to Wangen near Olten. His name is preserved in the municipal archives. He had seen in Holland how farmers cultivated the then exotic tobacco, and tried the process at home. The first plants grew in his home garden.

Tobacco was still new in Central Europe at that time. The plant had only arrived in Europe from America about 150 years earlier, initially as an ornamental plant and remedy. It was not until the 17th century that consumption as a luxury good became widespread - as pipe tobacco and snuff, long before the cigarette.

Within a few decades, the Wangen home garden became a local cultivation that spread across the Solothurn and Aargau Mittelland.

During the 18th century, tobacco cultivation spread across what are now the cantons of Aargau, Solothurn, Bern, Fribourg, and Vaud. Tobacco was considered a suitable complement to grain cultivation - it brought cash income for small farms that otherwise lived from subsistence farming.

The Confederacy viewed the new economic activity with skepticism. Some localities temporarily imposed tobacco bans for moral or agricultural reasons - tobacco competed with bread grain for arable land. These bans were usually lifted within a few years because they did not hold up under pressure from planters and traders.

In the Broye Valley - today the center of Swiss tobacco cultivation - cultivation began to be documented around 1750. The calcareous clay soils and mild climate proved ideal.

The second half of the 19th century brought industrialization. First cigarette machines, first tobacco mills, first manufactories with dozens of employees. Swiss tobacco found its market domestically and partly in export, especially to France and Germany.

Economic importance grew rapidly. Around 1900, about 8,000 hectares of tobacco were cultivated in Switzerland, across several thousand farms. For many farms in the Mittelland and Ticino, tobacco was the most important cash crop of the year.

Planters' associations emerged during this phase. In 1928, the cooperative SOTA (Société Coopérative pour l'Achat du Tabac Indigène), still existing today, was founded, later merging into SwissTabac.

The Brissago manufactory, founded in 1847 on Lake Maggiore, became the most famous Swiss cigar brand. Brissago cigars - thin, long, with a characteristic straw in the mouthpiece - were a popular Swiss product around 1900 and at the same time an export item.

At its peak, the Brissago factory employed over 1,000 women who rolled cigars at home or in the factory. These jobs were central to the Ticino economy because they enabled women to gain economic independence long before it was socially widespread.

The Brissago brand still exists today, albeit in a greatly reduced form. Production is part of the Swiss tobacco tradition, but today it is a niche.

In the 1950s and 60s, Swiss cultivation area reached its peak with over 5,000 hectares. Tens of thousands of farms cultivated tobacco, many of them only a few ares as a secondary crop. Tobacco was a national livelihood.

From the 1970s, the decline began. The international tobacco market globalized. Swiss industrial manufacturers switched to significantly cheaper imported goods from Brazil, Malawi, Zimbabwe. Swiss tobacco was only mixed in small proportions.

By the mid-2000s, the cultivation area shrank to around 600 hectares, the number of planters to a few hundred. Many farms exited because tobacco was hardly profitable without state support.

Today, the cultivated area is 450 hectares with around 130 farms. This is stabilization at a low level - supported by planters who maintain the tradition, and by a few brands that exclusively process Swiss tobacco.

Heimat Original was founded in 2018 with the explicit goal of being the only cigarette brand that exclusively processes Swiss tobacco. This decision was economically risky, but culturally consistent - Swiss tobacco needs Swiss buyers, otherwise it will disappear.

The planters who deliver today are typically the second or third generation on their farms. Their tobacco sheds have stood since the 19th century, their harvesting methods adapted over generations. This continuity is the true heritage of 330 years of tobacco tradition.

What began in a home garden in Wangen in 1697 continues today in a thinned out but precise form. Swiss tobacco is small, clear, local, and precisely in this form, survivable.