Reto Raselli’s home is Le Prese—the place of his birth and where he makes his living farming herbs.

He sits on a bench, overlooking a colorful field of blooming crop. The air is always fresh around the Lago di Poschiavo, he says. He likes to work outside, but it’s not unusual to spend long days and many hours in the fields.

Raselli has farmed in Le Prese for 30 years, growing everything from Edelweiss to Thyme. He is one of more than 100 herb farmers in Switzerland promoting mountain grown plants that have fought hard to grow in mountain altitude and air. 

Raselli runs his hands through lemon thyme, and urges me to smell the faint lemon fragrance in the mountain air. Though the scenery is breathtaking, Raselli says farming is still a hard life—depending a lot on weather and how quickly his workers fight the weeds.

Making a living as a Swiss herb farmer isn’t easy but Raselli has developed two business plans to keep him afloat. He creates his own products and teas on his farm and markets them to the Coop grocery chain. But more importantly he is a member of a farming cooperative growing herbs for use by Ricola, the Swiss producer of cough drops and candies which rely on herbal ingredients. 

Raselli opens a metal locker, filled with harvested thyme. He says Ricola has single-handedly developed the Swiss herbal farming market to shore up its own supply of ingredients. The company gives certifications and long-term contracts to farmers to guard against bad harvests.

Raselli has machines which chop herbs into tiny bits, to Ricola’s standards, which are loaded into large bags headed to Ricola’s factory near Basel. Farming and adhering to Ricola’s strict requirement is not easy—in fact a recent cold-snap destroyed a large patch of Raselli’s herbs. Despite these hardships Raselli says simply, this is his life. 

Tony Ganzer, World Radio Switzerland, Le Prese