Bavaria’s farmers have grown more wheat this year than before, but less barley. Wheat ripened on 505,100 hectares – in the previous year it was around 485,000 hectares. The arable farmers had sown summer and winter barley on 292,500 hectares, after 323,300 hectares in 2020, as the State Office for Statistics announced on Wednesday in Fürth. This trend has been observed for a long time: barley, which can be marketed as brewing barley if the conditions are right, is playing an increasingly less important role for farmers in the Free State.
The most important plant in the fields, however, was maize: silage or grain maize grew on an area of 543,300 hectares. According to the state office, this corresponds to 26.8 percent of the total arable land. Silage maize is fed to cattle and used to produce biogas. The sunflower was also popular in 2021: On 6,400 hectares it shone yellow in late summer, in 2020 it was still 5,000 hectares. There was also slight growth in soybeans, which grew on 19,800 hectares (2020: 18,500). At the same time, the area under cultivation for potatoes decreased, from 42,600 hectares to 39,100.