Status: 12/21/2022 1:31 p.m
The stock of pigs in Germany is lower than ever before. According to experts, the reasons are the difficult economic situation of farmers and the trend towards a meat-free diet.
The number of pigs in Germany has fallen to an all-time low as a result of the energy crisis and current nutritional trends. As of November 3, 21.3 million pigs were being kept in Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). That was 10.2 percent or 2.43 million animals fewer than a year ago.
In 1990 more than nine million pigs more
In a long-term perspective, the decline is even more pronounced: since 2020 alone, the number has fallen by almost a fifth (18.2 percent) and within ten years by almost a quarter (24.7 percent). For comparison: in 1990 around 30.8 million pigs were kept in this country.
The number of companies has also fallen by a whopping 43.3 percent since 2012 – from 29,800 to 16,900. Last year the minus was a good ten percent. This was accompanied by a trend towards larger farms: the average pig population rose from 949 to 1259 animals per farm during the period.
“Pig stocks and farm numbers fell, in particular because of the persistently difficult economic situation of many farms against the background of sharply increased energy, fertilizer and feed costs and thus higher production costs,” said the statistics office. Producer prices for animal products in October were almost 47 percent above the previous year’s level. The prices for slaughter pigs rose by 60.7 percent within a year.
The number of vegetarians keeps growing
Another reason for the lower number of animals and farms is the consumption of pork, which has been falling for years. It is estimated that almost eight million vegetarians now live in Germany, which is almost ten percent of the population. According to the Society for Consumer Research (GfK) in Nuremberg, the number of vegetarians has increased more than fifteenfold since 1983.
According to the supermarket chain Rewe, 42 million Germans describe themselves as so-called part-time vegetarians or flexitarians. These are people who eat mostly vegetarian food, but don’t want to give up meat and fish completely. The stock of cattle in Germany remained almost constant in 2022 compared to the last survey on May 3rd at around eleven million animals. Dairy cows continued the long-term downward trend.