Agarn (Walliser German: Agaru) is a municipality in the district of Leukin the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
History
Agarn is first mentioned in 1252 as Aert. In 1267 it was mentioned as Ayert and in the 16th century it was known as Agaren. Agarn was twice nearly totally burned down, in 1799 and 1899.
Geography
Agarn has an area, , of . Of this area, or 17.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 4.4% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.8% is either rivers or lakes and or 44.4% is unproductive land.
Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 0.7%. Out of the forested land, 30.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 4.8% is used for growing crops and 7.3% is pastures, while 2.1% is used for orchards or vine crops and 2.7% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes. Of the unproductive areas, 9.3% is unproductive vegetation, 33.3% is too rocky for vegetation and 1.8% of the land is covered by glaciers.
The municipality is located in the Leuk district, on an alluvial fan on the southern slope of the Rhone valley. It consists of the former linear village of Agarn.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Vert, a Pile embowed Argent, in dexter chief a cross couped, in sinister base a dove volant of the same.
Demographics
Agarn has a population () of . , 8.3% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of -0.9%. It has changed at a rate of -1.7% due to migration and at a rate of 1.9% due to births and deaths.
Most of the population () speaks German (684 or 90.2%) as their first language, Albanian is the second most common (35 or 4.6%) and Italian is the third (12 or 1.6%). There are 10 people who speak French.
, the gender distribution of the population was 51.1% male and 48.9% female. The population was made up of 362 Swiss men (47.0% of the population) and 32 (4.2%) non-Swiss men. There were 343 Swiss women (44.5%) and 34 (4.4%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 420 or about 55.4% were born in Agarn and lived there in 2000. There were 210 or 27.7% who were born in the same canton, while 46 or 6.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 68 or 9.0% were born outside of Switzerland.
The age distribution of the population () is children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 27.6% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 60.9% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 11.5%.
, there were 309 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 383 married individuals, 45 widows or widowers and 21 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 284 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.6 persons per household. There were 73 households that consist of only one person and 30 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 289 households that answered this question, 25.3% were households made up of just one person and there were 6 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 76 married couples without children, 116 married couples with children There were 12 single parents with a child or children. There was 1 household that was made up of unrelated people and 5 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.
there were 118 single family homes (or 62.8% of the total) out of a total of 188 inhabited buildings. There were 45 multi-family buildings (23.9%), along with 7 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (3.7%) and 18 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (9.6%).
, a total of 268 apartments (90.5% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 22 apartments (7.4%) were seasonally occupied and 6 apartments (2.0%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 3.9 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 1.57%.
The historical population is given in the following chart:
Politics
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 64.49% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP (23.06%), the SVP (10.62%) and the Green Party (0.79%). In the federal election, a total of 462 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 81.3%.