The change comes after the country’s dairy industry organisation, Branchorganisation Milch, decided to raise the indicative price of milk meant for drinking by three cents.

The new indicative price – that is to say, the median price set by the industry in selling to retailers – is 82 cents per kilogram, and only for the next two financial quarters. 

The price of milk used for food production such as in cheese of yoghurt will remain unchanged. 

The increase in price comes after farmers, predominantly in the country’s south-west, had waged a protest campaign to raise milk prices. 

In February, farmers across Switzerland gathered tractors in fields to spell out ‘SOS’, signalling the distress felt by farmers. 

Swiss farmers demanded prices that better reflect production costs, and would make the profession a viable in the long-term. 

As Arnaud Rochat, protest organiser and  a farmer from the canton of Vaud told SRF: 

“We want to be paid for what we produce at prices that take our costs into account. 

“It is still a problem when milk is cheaper than bottled water.

Concentrated mostly in the country’s French-speaking south-west cantons, the Swiss dairy industry is worth approximately CHF 2.5 billion, according to statistics repository Statista.