Tourism and agriculture in alpine regions

The paper tries to look into the economic relations between tourism and agriculture. Agriculture is supplying values for the tourism industry directly and indirectly. The direct supply arises from the sales of agricultural products, which are bought by the tourism sector either from farmers or from firms who use agricultural products as an input. The indirect supply is the cultivation and preservation of the landscape, the most important factor of production for summer tourism in the alps. The costs of preservation are born partly by the farmers, and partly by the tax payer subsidizing the farmers, the consumer paying higher prices than the world market prices and only in few cases by a small amount of subsidies paid directly or indirectly by the tourism industry. Whereas the direct supply of farmers could be substituted by foreign products, the indirect input of the agricultural sector for the tourism industry has necessarily to be produced by domestic farmers.