Grain consumption in Germany: trough or plate?

Almost 60 percent of the grain in Germany only ends up on the plate in a roundabout way – it is fed to pigs, cattle and poultry. Problematic in view of rising prices, but changing course is complicated.

The good news first: Nobody has to hoard for fear that there will soon not be enough food in Germany. “Thank God we have a high level of self-sufficiency in Germany,” emphasizes Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir. “Therefore there is no threat of hunger, no need.”

Most grain is fed

But: The prices for bread, pasta and other grain products have risen significantly since the beginning of the war. Associations such as Bread for the World and the German Nature Conservation Ring are therefore calling for the number of animals to be reduced. Because in Germany, most grain goes into the feeding trough and only ends up on the plate in a roundabout way – as meat or cheese: fattening pigs, for example, mainly eat wheat and corn.

“For three kilograms of feed, one kilogram of pork is produced in the end,” says Ralf Bloch, agricultural ecologist at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development. This shows that animal feeding is very inefficient in terms of energy. “In Germany we have about 24 million pigs that are kept, and that’s a significant form of luxury processing when you see how much feed is used for it,” criticizes Bloch.

Short-term reversal hardly possible

Changing that in the short term is difficult. First of all, neither fodder maize nor barley is needed for bread and pasta, but mainly wheat, spelt and rye. Secondly, the fattening animals are there and have to be fed. That is why Minister of Agriculture Özdemir wants to ensure a long-term solution and proposes reducing the number of farm animals.

“But at the same time, if there is more animal protection, i.e. the animals have more space, then the farmers should also get more money,” said the Green politician. “I’m currently working on a concept. That’s what the government alliance has set itself in the coalition agreement.” The federal government has budgeted one billion euros over the next four years for the restructuring of animal husbandry.

“The weaknesses of the system become clear”

Criticism of Özdemir’s plans comes, for example, from Albert Stegemann, spokesman for agriculture for the Union faction in the Bundestag. He complains that market intervention is only a theoretical option: “How do you want to implement it politically? I don’t think that’s possible at all,” Stegemann points out. “We have to conduct the right discussion like this: if there is awareness among the population that it should be regulated through shopping behavior. Then it also has an effect. And then in the end the market will work again.”

A second lever in the trough-plate debate is one’s own eating habits. Germans tend to eat less and less meat – and yet it is still twice as much as recommended by the German Society for Nutrition. “That means, on the one hand, we eat a lot of meat, and we produce this meat at the expense of grain yields, which we could also consume elsewhere,” says agroecologist Bloch. “And the problem persists regardless of the current crisis. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine are putting a finger in the wound. The weaknesses of the system are simply becoming particularly clear.” Due to the consequences of the war, this system is now being put to the test.