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Number of Swiss farms continues to fall

In 2010, the number of farms in Switzerland fell to below 60,000, according to figures released Tuesday by the federal statistics office. The number of organic farms is also shrinking.

Published: 2 August 2011 14:56 CEST

Number of Swiss farms continues to fall

Last year, there were 59,065 farms in Switzerland, 1.6 percent fewer than in 2009. The number employed on them also fell. All in all, 167,462 people worked in the agricultural sector in 2010, a decrease of 1.4 percent.

Mid-sized agricultural operations between 3 and 20 hectares have been hardest hit, and there were 1,050 fewer of them in 2010 than the year before.

Of those farms remaining, 59 percent of them are located in the flatlands, while 41.3 percent are in mountainous areas.

The number of organic farms has also fallen, have shrunk by 2.1 percent in 2010.

While there are fewer farms overall, more of them are increasing their animal stocks, the statistics office found. Most livestock is made up of pigs and cattle, and their numbers have remained relatively stable.

The number of chickens rose last year, surpassing nine million.

It has been a difficult few years for Swiss agriculture. Income from the sector fell by 3.4 percent in 2010 compared with the previous year, after the 7.7 percent drop in 2009.

The main reasons for the decline were poorer harvests, falling milk prices and the saturation of the pork market. Average earnings per job in the sector have also fallen slightly.

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Farmers dump sheep killed by wolves in front of Swiss government building

Around a dozen breeders came from the Saint-Barthelemy area in the western Swiss canton of Vaud to lay out the carcasses of 12 sheep in front of the regional government headquarters in Lausanne, the Chateau Saint-Maire.

“These sheep were killed last night,” Eric Herb, a member of a Swiss association demanding the regulation of big predators, was quoted as saying by the Keystone-ATS news agency.

“It is really time to act.”

“We are sick of this. We want the wolf killed,” agreed Patrick Perroud, a farmer and butcher from the nearby municipality of Oulens.

“Cohabitation is not possible. Our territory is too small,” he told Keystone-ATS.

The protesters told the news agency that wolves had killed 17 sheep in the same area late last month, two earlier this week and 13 overnight to Saturday.

“The breeders have played nice until now, but this time it was too much,” Herb said.

The protesters were planning to increase the pressure on the Vaud government environment minister, Vassilis Venizelos of the Green Party, he said.

One of the protesters’ banners read: “Vassilis step down”, Keystone-ATS reported.

The breeders had briefly negotiated with regional police before being allowed to lay down the animal carcasses on tarpaulin in front of the Chateau.

Participants in the protest, which was supported by the regional chapter of the far-right Swiss People’s Party — Switzerland’s largest party — lamented that they were losing sleep.

“We have to check on our animals every night,” one was quoted as saying.

After being wiped out more than a century ago, wolves have in recent decades begun returning to Switzerland and to several other European countries.

Since the first pack was spotted in the wealthy Alpine nation in 2012, the number of packs swelled to 32 last year, with around 300 individual wolves counted.

Nature conservation groups have hailed the return as a sign of a healthier and more diverse ecosystem.

But breeders and herders complain of attacks on livestock and have been ramping up demands to cull more wolves.

Swiss authorities last year relaxed the rules for hunting the protected species, and decided to allow large preventative culls in the most affected cantons but swift legal actions put those plans partially on ice.

The debate in several parts of Europe about wolves rose up the political agenda in September.

In an open letter to the European Commission, eight leading conservation groups said there were ways to make coexistence easier between humans and large wild animals like wolves.

“Damage to livestock is often linked to the lack of adequate supervision and/or physical protection,” they said. They pointed to strategies such as “the training of dogs to protect herds, education of herders, tools and technical solutions to deter wolves”.

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