Many Swiss farmers use honor system to sell their products

Yep...I agree it works well here and let's you farm while holding down another job. You can get "vine ripened" and the flavor it much better. It also is more efficient for spoilage. Hogs or chickens get it right after it is too ripe.

sunseb6• 7 years ago

As a Swiss guy, I must say I only see this in rural areas. It wouldn't work in big cities like Geneva I think (too many people living in urban areas who don't respect our wonderful country and that's a shame).

dontbenebby3• 7 years ago

This is actually fairly common in rural areas in America too. Maybe someone sets up a bunch of pumpkins, apples, etc at the end of their driveway (which in rural America can be measured in KM) and a box to put money in.

Stratoscope2• 7 years ago

Even in suburban areas. In San Jose we have Phil Cosentino's J & P Farms on Carter Avenue next to the Camden-85 interchange:

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.249591,-121.909198,240m/data...

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x808e340f2c491c5...

Sometimes there will be someone out at their fruit stand, but most of the time it runs on the honor system with a money slot where you pay for your produce.

jlarocco• 7 years ago

Yeah, it's a bit odd that they focused so much on the Swiss.

Even the article mentions it's widespread: "Unmanned stalls with vegetables can be found all over the world. Germany, Norway, the U.S., Australia, Canada, the UK are among the countries where the honor system isn’t any novelty."

013a2• 7 years ago

Yeah, this sounds like an article written by someone who lives in a big city and has never been to rural America. This isn't even uncommon; its pretty darn standard. Another common, similar thing you see all over (climatically appropriate) America are fruit orchards where you pay for a bag upfront and you can fill it as full as you want (or take more than the bag, or not even pay for the bag if you're dishonest).

Gustomaximus• 7 years ago

Also common in rural Australia to have this at the end of a driveway. Around me it's often firewood, fruits and honey.

laxk• 7 years ago

It is pretty common in Vermont and it is not only about veggies (meat and poultry too). You can just write a check or pay by cash and take change(if you need) from the cash register which is open. It is not based on the honor system (pay as much as you want) but on decency and trust, you have to weight everything and calculate price for goods by yourself but there is no one who is watching you.

It seems to me that such a system makes people show their best. Surely there is a percentage of people who may not act very well, but I believe that there are more good people anyway.

radiator• 7 years ago

In Geneva thirty years ago there were newspapers for sale on the street using this system.

hocuspocus• 7 years ago

It's still the case but I wonder for how long. Not because of theft but I assume the newspapers that survived are probably making the bulk of their income from subscribers. I haven't seen anyone putting coins into those vending boxes in a long time.

zcam• 7 years ago

With very high fines if you were caught paying less or nothing, that helped a bit I guess.

sunseb6• 7 years ago

Yes, and the next logical question would be: what has changed in Geneva these past 30 years? Hints: individualism, globalization, multiculturalism.

My father told me that when he served for our national army back then, soldiers just left their weapons alone in front of the train station while they were having a coffee before going into the train.

gcb0• 7 years ago

Print is weird.

For most print mediums, circulation is more important than sales. Because higher circulation generates more Advertising revenue, which is higher than sales.

But they can't give a newspaper/magazine away, because that would bump them to a lower category for which advertisers pay less.

The solution is to sell as cheap as your desired advertising demographic allows, and incurs lots and lots of "loss".

That is why even in the USA (land of the people-will-grab-anything-not-bolted-down) some newspapers still have that coin+trust box for newspapers.

jerven• 7 years ago

They are still there today. Source I bought my paper yesterday.

microtherion2• 7 years ago

I've seen this on farms within the city limits of Zürich. Schwamendingen, at that, not exactly known for its civility and kindness.

tduberne• 7 years ago

I live in Zurich (biggest city in Switzerland), and know of several such installations in the city itself. "Cities" in Switzerland are really not that urban ;-)

jbrazile• 7 years ago

In my hometown, a bit further down lake Zurich, here are two well-known such places, visible in google maps.

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.234931,8.6521491,3a,75y,13.9...

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.2063957,8.6876991,3a,60y,55....

TimTheTinker• 7 years ago

too many people living in urban areas who don't respect our wonderful country

I think people from lots of different countries feel that way. There’s something about being connected to the land that gives one a love for both the land and the human culture connected to it. That connection to the land is easily lost in urban environments.

kenneth3• 7 years ago

Being from Gimel (a small town in Vaud), a lot of the stories in the article remind me of happy memories growing up.

Switzerland has been struggling with an identity crisis of late as a lot of poorer immigrants from war-torn places (Albania when I was growing up, Maghreb and Middle East now) have been moving in to the cities, oftentimes not respecting our old traditions. Theft and petty crime is on the rise, and almost always at the hands of those poorer immigrants. It's led to a backlash that hasn't really brought out the best in us.

It's sad to see the cohesion and trustworthiness of the Swiss society disappear, though I guess it was somewhat inevitable.

sumedh• 7 years ago

oftentimes not respecting our old traditions.

Can the govt do something like introduce culture lessons for new immigrants?

ptspts• 7 years ago

Some of them provide free tasting as well: small glasses and many open bottles so that the customer can try all flavors before buying one.

chabes2• 7 years ago

This is more common than you might think in rural areas in California

dontbenebby3• 7 years ago

IIRC I saw this for strawberries when driving to SF for an internship. I've seen it for pumpkins in the midwest too.

chabes2• 7 years ago

Swanton Berry Farm along Hwy 1, perhaps?

Theodores• 7 years ago

Once upon a time I cycled through vast fields of strawberries and other yummy looking produce in California.

I did see honour system stalls but they were pretty rare considering the size of the area. They were more like curious exceptions rather than the norm. They were also geared up to sell at volumes that didn't suit the bike, so too much to carry.

I got the impression from the article on Switzerland that this was more of a way to do your shopping, so sensible quantities not vast bulk purchases.

Incidentally I did not stop to freeload a single strawberry. On a bike with nobody around this should have been simple, there weren't even any barbed wire fences. However, my riding buddy - also a non-American tourist - was not so keen. The reason why was a simple one - 'don't they have guns in America?'.

Actually they have guns in Switzerland too and there is a lot of national service practice going on at the weekends. In fact weekends are quite wonderful in Switzerland as the shops are closed and people go out and do things including going to honour system stalls. The guns though are quite terrifying if you are cycling as you can turn a corner on a descent and feel like you are suddenly in a firing range (rather than right next to one).

I have to say that the Californian produce looked good but was not that good when I bought it in the shops. The land of plenty turned out to be quite expensive and bland to European tastes. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the roadside appearance of plenty was not so good but the food bought in shops was as expensive as everything is in Switzerland (so no surprise) but delightful to taste.

The relative abundance of Swiss roadside honour stalls doesn't just say things about how honest people are in squeaky clean Switzerland, it also says something about the produce being of value rather than bland.

polotics• 7 years ago

So this! The lovely clicky sound of rifle bullets passing by above your head as you stroll on well signposted paths. I understand they do have concrete blocks preventing beginners from shooting too low. Still...

BurningFrog3• 7 years ago

This is a sign of a deeply trust based society.

I don't think articles like these are good for the system's health :)

yborg2• 7 years ago

You really think a significant number of people are going to get on a plane to Switzerland and then drive to Vaud to steal pumpkins?

BurningFrog3• 7 years ago

I there are always marginal effects, as an economist would put it.

microtherion2• 7 years ago

It's also a society with really high wages, so the barrier to staffing a stand is higher.

BurningFrog3• 7 years ago

San Francisco also has really high wages.

I don't see a lot of similar arrangements around here...

test1235• 7 years ago

Honesty boxes are common here in UK countryside too. Same as any country tho', it probably wouldn't work in the towns and cities.

I guess the number of people in a city make it more likely that there'd be enough 'cheaters' to ruin the whole enterprise and not make it worthwhile.

bongobongo2• 7 years ago

Exactly. It’s a scaling issue.

canofbars2• 7 years ago

You also have enough customers that having someone manage the store doesn't cost very much per sale.

jt2190• 7 years ago

Even retail establishments with staff and security systems balance the extra costs of these “loss prevention” measures against customer convenience. The goal is never perfect security but sufficient security. Large retailers typically set targets on loss and try to minimize them, within reason. Farm stands that operate like this have simply found a reasonable cost/benefit trade off. (There’s an apple orchard near Boston that leaves their store unattended for the slow winter months... My wife pops in a few times to buy some more apples.)

vram11• 7 years ago

Loss from stealing was called 'shrinkage' by retail industry people, in Sam Walton's autobiography 'Made in America'. As you say, they expected to have some. I wonder why it can't be prevented 100%.

rootusrootus• 7 years ago

Because stopping retail theft 100% requires an inconvenience to normal customers that is off-putting and will cause them to go somewhere else.

froindt• 7 years ago

Prevention to 100% would be costly. They have diminishing marginal returns.

Why would someone pay $50,000/year for a hypothetical system which would theoretically catch everyone and fill out the police report automatically when the store experiences a tiny $300 annual shrinkage loss?

unmole• 7 years ago

Lying for Money makes the case that the optimal amount of fraud in any real world system is non-zero. Fraud prevention has direct and indirect costs. At some point the costs of fraud prevention will exceed the cost of fraud itself.

NoInputSignal• 7 years ago

I've seen this with firewood in California. It probably costs the producer more to have someone there then it does losing a portion of stock to theft.

ghaff• 7 years ago

It's very common with firewood bundles in areas of New England where, in the summer, a lot of tourists are buying firewood to burn at a campground. Quite a few houses have some bundles of firewood out that they probably cut themselves from dead trees/branches on the property along with an honor box. Very small-time supplemental income operations that aren't nearly worth someone hanging out all day for maybe only $20 or so.

muro• 7 years ago

I've seen some in Germany (e.g. Pick flowers, put coins into the box), but I like the ones I found in Switzerland more - larger selection including fruit, vegetables and eggs. Maybe I just got lucky.

sonnyblarney• 7 years ago

They have this in Ontario.

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

There's a farm stall in Bolinas, California that sells produce with the honor system. It's the first one I've encountered in my life.

I had no idea this was much more widespread.

blfr• 7 years ago

This is what high trust society looks like.

dliff• 7 years ago

I was recently in Zurich and entered a small shop that was honor system. Scan and pay for your own items, no staff. Small food items, drinks, wine available.

Might be different since there could be cameras or some other form of accountability, but I found it interesting.

jopsen• 7 years ago

Would police every bother investigating simple theft from such a store..

Even if there is excellent video and identification?

bufferoverflow• 7 years ago

You have to understand that Switzerland is a very rich and very expensive country. Stealing some fruits would be a really dumb crime to commit, when you can steal much more expensive things easily.

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

I saw one of these in Washington State in October 2016, and I thought it was super cool. I bought some sweet corn and BBQ sauce :)

https://imgur.com/a/wmka5yA

tapvt• 7 years ago

Very common in rural New England as well. This may be common in many other rural areas, I’d guess.

interurban• 7 years ago

Like several other commenters noted, these types of roadside stands are prevalent throughout rural areas of the US. You usually only see them on side roads though, if you're just passing through on the highways you'll miss them.

hirundo• 7 years ago

I ran into this in California at a small farm along Highway 1 a few miles north of Santa Cruz. It's a scenic ocean side rural locale but near all the big Bay Area cities and frequented by day visitors from there. There was a shack with a good variety of their produce laid out, with price labels. Up front there was a cash box, with about $40 already in it, and a sign that said pay here. This was late '90s. I really hope that it continued to work for them for a long time after that. I haven't seen that elsewhere before or since. I overpaid as a tip. I hope that happens enough to offset cheats.

SomeOldThrow• 7 years ago

You can still see this in rural new england, at least, though I expect with far less non-local traffic than california 1.

dang• 7 years ago

I've seen them in the town of Sonoma as recently as last season.

davidjnelson• 7 years ago

There’s one in Soquel ( next to Santa Cruz ) I visited last year. Really neat feel to it.

gmac• 7 years ago

In rural south west England, on holiday last year, the well-stocked local farm shop operated not only an honesty box, but an honesty credit card machine, with detailed instructions how to put a transaction through. The merchant receipt went in the honesty box, of course. I was astonished but pretty pleased, because I was low on cash and far from any ATM.

Symbiote• 7 years ago

PayM would be the easy implementation of this, it's the generic mobile phone based bank transfer system for the UK.

In Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland the same shop would have a phone number. You type the phone number into the app (which shows the name as confirmation), the amount, and press send. It's not tied to any particular bank.

Unfortunately, the UK system isn't really catching on. Instead, my friends seem to be using proprietary apps which only work for friends at the same bank.

stevenwoo• 7 years ago

I've been here since the late 90's and the same self service stands that were here then are still here - there are several between Palo Alto and Cupertino.

There's also a self service rest stop mainly for cyclists that's been in operation for the last 10 years or so, between Woodside and Half Moon Bay. https://potreronuevofarm.org/bike-hut/

yborg2• 7 years ago

Also found in rural Japan.

https://en.japantravel.com/saitama/honesty-shops/59159

jMyles2• 7 years ago

Last year we found a place on the Oregon coast that had a little freezer with Salmon and Halibut. Also a table with Cherries, Peaches, and a few vegetables with an honor box and, interestingly we thought, QR codes to accept BTC and ETH.

Halibut was killer, but I paid in USD because my phone was dead.

selimthegrim• 7 years ago

Haha can I get a +/- 10 mi general area to not kill the goose?

jMyles2• 7 years ago

On the 101, South of Garibaldi, North of Lincoln City. :-)

mruts• 7 years ago

Seems to me that the farmers will need to charge a premium to make up for theft, assuming that the total amount stolen is greater than the cost of someone sitting there.

For rural areas where turnover is low and where there’s more trust, this system sounds pretty effective.

On a side note, this isn’t exactly an honor system, as the cash is still locked away I’m guessing.

jandrewrogers• 7 years ago

As others have noted, this is common in rural America, which tend toward being very high-trust communities such that many people don't even bother to lock their doors. Bartering local goods and services is such an integral part of the rural social fabric that everyone has an interest in making it work well with minimal transaction costs.

Part of what makes it work in rural areas is that no one is really anonymous. The local social networks tend to be very quick to identify bad actors.

vkou2• 7 years ago

As others have noted, this is common in rural America, which tend toward being very high-trust communities such that many people don't even bother to lock their doors

There's a practical reason for that, too. If you're being burglarized in a rural community, a locked door will be an obstacle for ~10 seconds, and you'll come home to just as much of your stuff stolen, plus a broken door to deal with.

MrMember• 7 years ago

In a very small town near where I grew up every household had a key to the gas station. They could fill up whenever they wanted and leave the money on the counter.

moroleth• 7 years ago

In Paris pavements are routinely lined with stacks of books, magazines, comics, etc. The idea being 'you take some, you leave some. Or just take, at least the books will find some use.' I've seen it abroad so it's probably widespread.

Slightly more tangential, but people also often leave furniture (or clothes) they don't need outside for the taking, often because they're moving places. You notify the municipality, put up a post-it with a number on it so that they can eventually identify and carry the stuff away if it finds to takers, but in the meantime other people are free to help themselves. I have friends who would completely furnished their apartment with furniture found on the street.

_bxg1• 7 years ago

the U.S...[is] among the countries where the honor system isn’t any novelty.

I've seen plenty of roadside stands, but I've never seen one of these in my life

WalterBright3• 7 years ago

My first exposure to the honor system was at Caltech. It worked very well there, and it was really nice to not have to obsessively lock your dorm room door every time you walk out.

I've since used the honor system in my business dealings, and it works well enough to allow me to continue with it.

Stratoscope2• 7 years ago

One of the reasons this worked so well at Caltech was that every freshman's first night included an introduction to lock picking.

If you locked your door, you might expect a polite note like "I noticed your door was locked. Thanks, it gave me a chance to test my lock picking skills."

WalterBright3• 7 years ago

When I attended in the 70's, lock picking was there but wasn't much of a big deal. The protocol was: door is open, come on in. Door is closed, don't come in. As simple as that.

My favorite was the bathroom, which had a sign on it with a rotating pointer, and 4 quadrants labelled:

1. men

2. women

3. don't know

4. don't care

where you selected one on entry. For the 70s, it was way ahead of its time :-)

JoshMnem• 7 years ago

It's also like that in the Massachusetts countryside.

aloukissas• 7 years ago

Very similar situation in Ikaria (Greece) - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where...

lruor• 7 years ago

The honor system was also used in World of Warcraft: https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Honor_system_(pre-2.0)

wahlis• 7 years ago

Here in Sweden I've noted that some sellers have started adding a Swish-number for payments. Swish is a Swedish payment service where you basically send money to a phone number. This is great since the only risk for the seller now is the produce. The cash can not be stolen.

lukego• 7 years ago

That sounds very Swedish! The nearest I've seen to that in Switzerland was a farm with a book where you can write your name, address, and how much you owe them. That was on a slightly larger farm (~100 cows and pigs) that sold expensive things like cold-cut meat too.

I live in a tourist region of Switzerland and here the local supermarkets carry local produce e.g. cheeses and sausages bearing the name and address of the farmer who produced them.

In our village we can buy cheese, eggs, honey, and some preserves by letting ourselves into the cellar of the local farmer and leaving money in a jar.

staticautomatic• 7 years ago

How bucolic

tathougies• 7 years ago

I've driven extensively in California, Hawaii, and other western states, and this is extremely common.

thrower123• 7 years ago

Any place with a high trust society tends to do this. I see farm stands and camp wood stands with honor boxes all over rural New England.

rossdavidh2• 7 years ago

The book "Freakonomics" details a similar bagel-selling system, where they would put bagels in the break room of workplaces, and you would pay on the honor system. After years of collecting data, the owner realized he had been doing a real-time, real-life experiment on how honest people are. You don't know WHO took without paying, but you can tell HOW MANY of your bagels were paid for. There's analysis of how it varies by time of year, type of workplace, etc. Fascinating.

mpfundstein• 7 years ago

Mind telling tthe findings? :-)

lawrenceyan• 7 years ago

tl;dr Most people are generally honest, and act accordingly. A few people will consistently take advantage of the system, which slightly lowers the average.

emiliobumachar• 7 years ago

From memory, one thing that surprised me was holidays. Thefts decrease in the days before a holiday that's basically just a day off for most people, but thefts increase in the days before a holiday that has a strong tradition for getting together with the extended family.

edmundsauto• 7 years ago

At first, the deposits didn't cover costs. They tried a number of different options to encourage better compliance, the standout finding was that just putting up a printout of a pair of eyes (even drawn) increased compliance.

rossdavidh2• 7 years ago

It's been a while, but I seem to recall that honesty skyrocketed in the months immediately after 9/11, then gradually came back down to normal. I also seem to recall that the professions which made the most money were NOT the ones with the highest compliance, which is not all that surprising, but still...

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

I worked somewhere that did this. Every month there was much more money left than bagels sold. We gossiped about this for a while. Eventually an anonymous note was left (paraphrased as best as I could remember):

"Some people are forgetful or hungry or in a rush. I don't want these times to sour this workplace because people grow to think someone is stealing."

mc32• 7 years ago

Me too. But it was the opposite. Guy was barely making any money due to shrinkage so he quit the location.

paulie_a• 7 years ago

In the past I would round up because I don't carry change.

duxup2• 7 years ago

Also.... exact change can be an issue.

flyGuyOnTheSly• 7 years ago

This happens all over rural southwestern ontario as well.

I never thought it was strange or newsworthy as a result.

gorbypark• 7 years ago

Yeah, I really miss the road side corn from back home.

rv-de• 7 years ago

in many German offices you may find the Snackbox (http://www.snackbox.de/). it's based on trust based payment and they'll cover the difference. i genuinely love those concepts.

bookofjoe• 7 years ago

I saw these in rural New Zealand in 1982.

khuey• 7 years ago

They're still there in 2019.

tomcam• 7 years ago

Very common here in Western Washington (Microsoft country). We get honey, flowers, and produce that way

gumby• 7 years ago

Not sure what’s so extraordinary about this — I’ve used such rural systems in France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the USA.

kenneth3• 7 years ago

Growing up in Switzerland, when we lived on the outskirts of Bern, we would get our milk from such a dispenser at a farm. It was a 5min walk to the farm, and we'd bring our own bottle and fill it up from a spout. The milk was fresh and unpasteurized, so we'd have to leet it sit in the fridge for a few hours to separate it from its cream.

justwalt• 7 years ago

Wow. How does it compare to the store bought milk of today?

kenneth3• 7 years ago

It's not even in the same universe in terms of quality. Although it went bad way quicker, so you had to drink it in a day or so max.

omnibrain• 7 years ago

Here in southern germany ots of farmers sell Apples and other fruit (and sometimes vegetables) this way. Some also have fields of flowers where you can cut some and pay at a honor box. Though generally you put your money in a heavily bolted down box through a narrow slit.

In Scotland, especially on the Hebrides I saw various types of honor stalls. One sold all kinds of food, prepared and unprepared even warm pies, another one was just a Box with cakes, brownies and muffins and some thermos with tea and coffee and some dishes placed at a POI. In both cases you put your money just into a carboard box, so you could even get change.

duxup2• 7 years ago

This isn't that unusual at roadside stands I see in some rural places in the US.

If someone isn't there they just leave a box or bucket with a sign.

okennedy• 7 years ago

This phenomenon isn't unique to Switzerland, or even Europe. Farmstands throughout Western NY and PA have similar setups: Grab some fresh fruits, veggies, eggs, etc... and leave your cash in the box.

dnautics• 7 years ago

I just came across and patronized an honor system farm stand in Bolinas Ca yesterday.

myrandomcomment• 7 years ago

There a a few places off of summit rd. In NorCal that do the same thing.

csomar• 7 years ago

Unmanned stalls with vegetables can be found all over the world. Germany, Norway, the U.S., Australia, Canada, the UK are among the countries where the honor system isn’t any novelty.

This seems to be a property of the rural community rather than the country/people. The same happens in Tunisia in some very rural/remote places. The farmer will put their produce on the road, and then the buyers will collect from the road.

This was a surprise to me as Tunisia cities are plagued with vandalism and property theft.

lazyjones• 7 years ago

Mapping where such systems actually work well would produce the best "quality of life" guide for me. It just takes a few bad apples to break these forever and communities in their naivety often don't notice until it's too late.

antpls• 7 years ago

How does that actually work ? It takes only one thief to steal the entire box of payments.

Do they have hidden camera to dissuade people of stealing the box ?

gingabriska• 7 years ago

Once I broke the signal in Switzerland and outran the cops sent back the car to the countryside and took bus to the hotel just to find the traffic ticket waiting for me in the room I booked.

I am still not sure how they knew where I am going and which hotel I'll be staying at.

Many Swiss farmers use honor system to sell their products

Related Stories