Farmers in parliament: high direct payments, a hard line against the wolf

In 2025, Neuchatel SVP National Councillor Didier Calame received direct payments totalling 239,217 francs.

This is shown by an analysis by «Blick» from 27 September 2026. No other farmer in the Federal Palace received more money from the federal coffers.

On 11 August 2026, this same Calame published a text on the SVP website entitled «Attaques de loups : trop, c'est trop !» («Wolf attacks: enough is enough!»). In early September, he went further, describing the so-called “vegan initiative” as an attack on agriculture and freedom. Direct payments are tied to requirements and performance criteria for farms. This is precisely why transparency is needed when parliamentarians help decide on agricultural budgets, herd protection and wolf kills — and benefit from them themselves. This pattern is particularly evident among influential figures of the farming-conservative parliamentary lobby.

What the farmers in the Federal Palace receive from the state

According to «Blick», Calame is followed by Vaud SVP National Councillor Sylvain Freymond with 167,240 francs. SVP party president Marcel Dettling received a total of 78,201 francs in 2025, while the Green politician Kilian Baumann received 34,550 francs. Farmers' association president Markus Ritter (Die Mitte) received 83,262 francs back in 2022. Since he handed over his farm in Altstätten SG to his sons, payments to the business no longer appear on the publicly accessible lists.

The payments to three further National Councillors remain completely in the dark: Martin Hübscher (SVP), Andreas Meier (Centre) and Thomas Stettler (SVP). According to the Federal Office for Agriculture, they are merely co-operators and invoke their partners' right to privacy. So precisely those politicians who help decide on the distribution of billions do not have to disclose how much of it ends up on their own farm.

The lobby is successful. For the accompanying measures to the free trade agreement with the Mercosur states, parliament approved 517 million francs over six years, even though the Federal Council had only requested 158 million. For the Agricultural policy from 2030 onwards (AP30+), the federal government envisages a payment framework of just under 14 billion francs for the years 2030 to 2033. The consultation on this runs until 8 December 2026.

The same circles are campaigning against the wolf

Not every farmer in parliament is an opponent of the wolf. But at the top of the farming lobby, the line is clear. In August 2024, Markus Ritter appeared at a press conference on the Halde alp at Flumserberg and warned that alpine farming was in danger. He demanded that entire wolf packs, rather than individual animals, be allowed to be shot. Already in 2022, the Farmers' Union under his leadership had demanded that the revision of the hunting act had to go through parliament «at express train speed». Today, the union refers to the revised law as the «livestock protection act».

In a 2025 video, SVP president Marcel Dettling accused the Schwyz government of hiding behind the federal government when it came to killing wolves. The government rejected his account as untruthful. Wild beim Wild has already extensively documented Marcel Dettling's double standards.

The next tightening of the rules is already on the table. Based on a motion by SVP Councillor of States Esther Friedli, wolves are in future also to be allowed to be killed during the whelping period and in hunting ban zones. The consultation on this revision of the hunting act runs until 16 October 2026. In parallel, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) has allowed Valais to kill two thirds of the young wolves from two packs.

832 kills versus over 85 million slaughters

How big is the problem that is being mobilised against here? According to the cantonal kill statistics of the Gruppe Wolf Schweiz, wolves killed 832 farm animals across Switzerland in 2025, down from 1'426 in 2022. The FOEN, using its own divergent compensation period, reports 808 compensated animals. This decline occurred even though the number of wolves has increased. Around 94 per cent of the animals killed are sheep. At the end of July 2025, 438'055 sheep were registered in Switzerland.

This stands in stark contrast to a completely different order of magnitude. In 2024, for the first time, over 85 million animals were slaughtered in Switzerland, including around 82 million chickens, 2.3 million pigs and about 600'000 cattle. According to Swissveg, this figure rose again in 2025. Measured against the more than 85 million slaughterings in 2024, for every farm animal killed by a wolf in 2025 there are, statistically, more than 100'000 non-human animals killed in Swiss slaughterhouses.

Even among sheep themselves, the wolf is a marginal phenomenon. Every year, several tens of thousands of animals die, according to the Federal Office for Agriculture, mainly from diseases, parasites, epidemics and bad weather. In the canton of Grisons, around 1'000 sheep and goats died from illness and accidents on alpine pastures in 2023, while wolf kills stood at 259 by the end of September. There was no press conference on the alp for these animals.

Who ultimately pays for the damage

When a wolf kills a farm animal, the general public pays. Since 1 January 2026, the federal government has covered 80 per cent of the compensation, with the affected canton covering the remaining 20 per cent. Since 2025, the FOEN has only compensated for kills in protected situations or where immediate measures were subsequently taken. Herd protection is also funded with public money: from 2025, 7 million francs per year will be available for this in the federal budget. The FOEN itself states that this funding is likely to be a decisive factor in why the number of kills has not risen to the same extent as the wolf population.

The figures prove that herd protection works. Around the turn of the millennium, a wolf killed on average around 33 sheep per year; today the figure is around five. In Valais, around 80 percent of livestock kills in 2023 occurred in herds with no protection whatsoever. Wolf kills are a real problem for affected livestock owners. But the figures show that they are not an inevitable consequence of a growing wolf population. What matters is whether the animals, which are destined for the slaughterhouse anyway, are properly protected.

Commentary: The hypocrisy of the subsidy farmers

One has to let the maths sink in. A National Councillor receives almost a quarter of a million francs in taxpayer money in a single year, and then writes «trop, c’est trop» about a wild animal that, across the whole of Switzerland, kills in an entire year roughly as many farm animals as die in Swiss slaughterhouses in just over five minutes. It is not the wolf that is too much. What is too much is the matter-of-factness with which a heavily subsidised industry dips into the public purse while simultaneously demanding that a protected wild animal pay with its life for the industry's own failings.

The very same associations and politicians who send more than 85 million non-human animals to the slaughterhouse year after year stage every killed sheep as a national emergency. For one dead lamb on the alpine pasture, there are press conferences against a mountain backdrop, special broadcasts, urgent parliamentary motions and expedited kill orders. For millions of chickens killed after just a few weeks, the vast majority of which have never once been outdoors, there is marketing support. For the tens of thousands of sheep that die every year from disease, parasites and cold, there is not even a press release. The outrage is not concern for the animals. It is calculation.

The wolf is the ideal scapegoat. It distracts from the fact that herd protection is implemented half-heartedly in many places, even though it is co-financed by the state. It distracts from the fact that alpine farming would barely be viable without direct payments. And it distracts from the fact that those who shout loudest in parliament for kills are themselves profiting handsomely from the taxpayer. Anyone whose income depends to a large extent on the public has a duty of responsibility, not an entitlement to kills.

The consequence is obvious. Direct payments for the summer grazing of small livestock must be strictly tied to effective herd protection. All parliamentarians who, as farm operators or co-operators, receive subsidies must disclose this in full. And anyone who regards the wolf as a problem that they themselves are unwilling to solve with taxpayers' money should not be allowed to help decide wolf policy without disclosing their conflicts of interest. The consultations on the hunting act, running until 16 October, and on AP30+, running until 8 December 2026, are the opportunity to demand exactly that.