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How to keep up with what’s in season in the Lake Geneva region

Our MarketDay posts provide a photo gallery of all the products locally available every week in the local farmers markets.

The Lake Geneva region still isn’t providing hot-weather products like melons and tomatoes, so the photo galleries already posted provide a good overview of what you can expect to find at the farmers market. It can serve as a guide when making your shopping list, so that you don’t have any unpleasant surprises when you get there.

Another source of information is OPAGE, the Geneva office for the promotion of local agricultural products. Unfortunately, their photo gallery is short and is not regularly updated. The seasonal food chart could, however, serve as a complement to our weekly MarketDay posts.

Genève Famille offers information and good advice about buying local products, and says that in a 2008 enquiry carried out by “Bon à Savoir,” out of the 17 Swiss products examined, six proved to be less expensive in the Lausanne farmers market than in four large supermarkets selected for the survey. This is a bit on an aside, but it does indicate that it is not always more expensive to buy locally, and you can be sure that it will be fresher than anything you find in a supermarket.

“Proche de vous. Les Paysans suisses.” offers numerous brochures on various seasonal and local products, free of charge. Unfortunately, even though the site is in English, the brochures are only in German or French.

If you can’t get to the farmers market, you can also buy fresh, local products through the Cercle des Agriculteurs de Genève et Environs at 15 Rue des Sablières, 1242 Satigny, tel. +41(0)22 306 10 10.

In neighboring France, Produits du Terroir provides lists of address for a wide range of local products in the Rhône-Alpes region. France des Saveurs is also in the process of setting up a detailed listing for the region.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to come up with similar sources of information in Vaud.

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