Harvest balance
Slightly fewer apples and significantly fewer plums in 2021
Apples lie in a warehouse of an apple growing company in Rhineland-Palatinate. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The harvest volume of what is by far the most harvested tree fruit in Germany has fallen by 1.8 percent.
The apple harvest in Germany in 2021 was slightly lower than a year earlier. Around 1.0 million tons of apples were picked, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on the basis of final figures.
This means that the harvest volume of the most widely harvested tree fruit in Germany was 1.8 percent below the previous year’s level. Compared to the long-term average for the years 2011 to 2020, however, the apple harvest in 2021 was 4.6 percent larger, according to the Wiesbaden statisticians.
Around two thirds of the domestic apples come from two federal states: Baden-Württemberg (34.3 percent) and Lower Saxony (29 percent), where the largest growing areas are: the old state in Lower Saxony and the Lake Constance region in Baden-Württemberg. More than three quarters (76.1 percent) of the apples harvested in Germany (764,500 tons) were offered for sale as dessert fruit. About a fifth (22.8 percent) was processed industrially into juice or cider, for example, the remaining 11,500 tons are for personal consumption. Apples make up almost 90 percent of the tree fruit harvest in Germany.
Plums and plums follow well behind in second place with a share of 3.5 percent. The amount of plums and plums harvested in Germany in 2021 was 39,900 tons, well below the previous year’s figure of 46,500 tons, despite the almost constant cultivation area. The fact that this fruit fell below the average harvest volume of the past ten years (46,200 tons) by 13.7 percent was explained by the statisticians with unfavorable weather conditions due to late frosts. Rhineland-Palatinate (13,700 tons) and Baden-Württemberg (10,000 tons) are leaders in the plum harvest in Germany.