Once, Switzerland was a land of pears.
When we picture the Swiss countryside today, we imagine tidy fields, precision farming, and alpine order. But not so long ago, vast stretches of eastern Switzerland were covered in towering pear trees - ancient giants that fed communities, sustained wildlife, and produced perry renowned across Europe.
So how did a nation famed for care, balance, and cultivation come to destroy eleven million fruit trees in the space of a generation?
Join John and Patrick as they unravel one of the strangest and most unsettling episodes in modern agricultural history: the deliberate, state-sponsored destruction of Switzerland’s perry orchards. From temperance panics and alcohol laws to bureaucrats with axes, propaganda films, and the cult of “modern” efficiency, this is a story of progress turned destructive - and of a drink, a landscape, and a culture quietly erased.
Was this modernization… or cultural vandalism? And what was lost when the last great pear trees fell?
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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