The consumption of milk, cheese and butter in Germany fell last year. The reasons for the decline could be slowly falling prices and plant-based alternatives.
People in Germany consumed less milk, cheese and butter in 2023. How preliminary figures show that published by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, per capita consumption fell everywhere.
The experts suspect that the slowly falling prices for milk and milk products as well as the increasing sales of plant-based milk alternatives could have contributed to this result.
816 grams less cheese
The consumption of drinking milk fell by almost one percent to just under 46 kilograms per capita – thus setting the record low of the previous year. Production also fell by almost one percent to around 4.2 million tons compared to the previous year.
Per capita consumption of cheese also fell, falling by 816 grams to 23.8 kilograms. Cheese production increased from 2.64 million to 2.66 million tons. Cheese exports reached 1.41 million tons, the highest level since 1992.
Per capita consumption of butter, milk fat and milk fat products fell by 1.4 percent to 5.6 kilograms. While overall production of such products only increased slightly by 1.8 percent to 481,000 tons, butter production fell by almost four percent last year. Exports rose by more than 4.2 percent, while imports fell by more than ten percent.
The number of dairy cows continues to decline
The trend of decreasing number of dairy cows in Germany, which has been ongoing since 2014, continued with a decline in 2023 – from around 3.8 million animals in 2022 to around 3.7 million.
The number of dairy cow holdings fell from 52,895 to 50,581. The average milk output per cow per year increased again from 8,504 (2022) to 8,780 kilograms.