There has long been speculation in the organic scene, and now a high-ranking expert has said it openly for the first time: The goal of Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU), according to which the proportion of organic agriculture in Bavaria should increase to 30 percent by 2030, is unrealistic. “That won’t work, the growth rates for organic would have to double from now on,” said Professor Achim Spiller on Wednesday in a state parliament hearing on organic farming in Bavaria.
Spiller, who teaches marketing for food and agricultural products at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, is one of the most renowned advisors to the federal government on agricultural issues. His demand: “Politics should be honest and set a more realistic goal.” Especially since, from Spiller’s point of view, Bavaria is already in a good position when it comes to organic – not only in terms of the large number of organic farms, but also those of processors and trading companies.
In fact, Bavaria still ranks very high nationwide when it comes to organic farming, even if it has hardly grown in Bavaria in the past year. The number of organic farms increased by only 284 to 11,811 in 2022. Together they farmed 415,528 hectares of agricultural land. That is an increase of almost 7,000 hectares compared to the previous year. The proportion of organic land in total agricultural land in Bavaria is now 13.43 percent. You can read about it in the current annual report by Minister of Agriculture Michaela Kaniber on organic farming. However, it is also clear that Söder’s 30 percent target is still 16.7 percentage points short. And 2030 is less than seven years away.
The stagnation of organic farming in Bavaria goes hand in hand with the dent in the organic sector as a whole. In 2022, their sales have plummeted. Across Germany, consumers spent half a billion euros less on organic food than in the previous year. The reasons are the Ukraine crisis and high inflation. They hit the organic sector particularly hard because consumers save on expensive groceries. However, in 2022, with 15.31 billion euros, the industry still had a turnover of a good three billion euros more than in 2019, the year before the corona pandemic, which gave it a unique boom with its lockdowns. In the state parliament hearing, the confidence that we were dealing with a temporary dip, which of course could last for some time, prevailed.
As far as the way out is concerned, Spiller and other experts were also in agreement: the proportion of organic food in so-called communal catering should be increased drastically, in company canteens as well as in day-care centers, school canteens, hospitals and similar facilities. The enormous potential that exists there can be seen from the fact that, according to estimates, more than 16 million people eat meals in mass catering every day – with an organic share of just one percent. The organic farmers, but also processors like Barbara Scheitz from the Andechs organic dairy, have therefore long been demanding a binding organic quota of at least 30 percent for meals in public facilities. In the meantime, the farmers’ association has also joined the demand – on the condition, however, that it is “organic from Bavaria”. Only then is it guaranteed that the Bavarian organic farmers will benefit.