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It would probably be more cost effective to create a grow room for umm "hydroponic vegetables" or something, depending on the local laws regarding growing things which can vary by county and state.

(Note: Though Switzerland is also federal, it is divided into cantons and comunes, not states and counties).

Regarding the legality of growing the specific specie of "hydroponic vegetables" that you had in mind, the law is quite clear: you can go full commercial as long as your producing low... "vitamin" vegetable, and people are allowed to carry their snack (= small quantity for consumption) regardless of content of "vitamins".

In practice, based on what I've heard from friends (sorry only anecdotes, no first-hand experience: I'm more a beer type of person), growing your own "high-vitamin" "hydroponic vegetables" for your own consumption is more or less tolerated, as long as it's not exploited commercially.

So to go back to your proposition :
  - To recoup costs, they could grow nearly any other vegetables commercially and sell them, but not the "high-vitamin hydroponic vegetables" you had in mind (the commercial exploitation being the big practical "nono", the "high vitamin" content being the legal pretext to prevent it).

But in practice, the canton (=state)-owned utility companies will pay you when buying back energy.
It is common practice here around for anyone with local production (such as solar panels) to have special meters that can sell back electricity into the network.

So most probably, they are going to earn the easiest money simply by injecting the extra electricity into the network.
(No need to fuss with any agricultural work).

I've been having plenty of discussions on the topic. It's funny, as Switzerland is probably the country that needs something like this the least. The median salary is around 75,000 USD, and although there is no global minimum salary in the law, there are sectorial conventions. The salary for a supermarket cashier starts at around $4,000 USD per month, but a gardener with technical training, for instance, will not earn less that $4,600.

It's also one of the few where citizens can change their constitution easily and directly, i.e. one of the few where this could ever happen. It won't happen this time (according to the polls), although many voters I talked to just disagree with the number, not the principle.

The BBC has a nice article on it, showing the minimum and maximum salaries, and of course the ratio, for a few major Swiss companies. If you want to learn more about the direct aspects of Swiss democracy, the federal government publishes some information in English.

The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly. I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.

+1

If there is any transparency and accountability left in the US federal government, it is fading very fast. I mean, Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto executive as Commissioner of Foods for the Food and Drug Administration, and Tom Wheeler, a powerful lobbyist for the big cable and wireless corporations, was appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission. And, of course, even the most mundane documents from these bureaucracies is categorized as "classified", and of course Edward Snowden is now in hiding for revealing the collaborations between the NSA, AT&T, Verizon, and Israeli technology companies.

And all this corruption is why libertarian ideas are becoming more popular in the US.

The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly. I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.

+1

If there is any transparency and accountability left in the US federal government, it is fading very fast. I mean, Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto executive as Commissioner of Foods for the Food and Drug Administration, and Tom Wheeler, a powerful lobbyist for the big cable and wireless corporations, was appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission. And, of course, even the most mundane documents from these bureaucracies is categorized as "classified", and of course Edward Snowden is now in hiding for revealing the collaborations between the NSA, AT&T, Verizon, and Israeli technology companies.

And all this corruption is why libertarian ideas are becoming more popular in the US.

The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly.
I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.

The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly.
I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.