Status: 02.04.2023 2:10 p.m
Sales of organic products are falling for the first time in years. Some farmers are turning their backs on organic farming and back to conventional production. Does the success story falter?
For years, the organic world only went in one direction: upwards. more sales, increasing profits, more and more farmers who rely on organic. But now that seems to be over. More and more farmers want to go back to conventional farming.
“The era is over”
For example the Pöhls in Freiensteinau: Jenny and Hajo Pöhl unscrew the Bioland sign on their barn. “The era is over, after ten years we don’t want to anymore,” says dairy farmer Jenny Pöhl, and it doesn’t sound like she regrets it. At the beginning of the year they returned to conventional farming.
And that even though they will then get eleven cents per liter less from the dairy than before. Seen in terms of the pure milk price, that sounds like less income. But at the same time the savings are significantly higher: “The feed only costs half of what we paid for organic feed.”
Conditions make work difficult
In the case of rapeseed meal, it is half the cost, but there is a higher yield from the same area. This is of course due to the fertilizers, explains Hajo Pöhl. “But I also have to secure my income. That has been difficult for our farm in recent years.”
The fact that their enthusiasm for organic farming has been lost over time is not only due to economic reasons. The organic guidelines, to which more and more requirements were added over the years, made the work more difficult. That is why more and more farmers are turning their backs on organic farming.
Every seventh farm is organic
For Gerold Rahmann, President of the Thünen Institute for Organic Farming, this is no surprise: as soon as it no longer pays off, even more farmers in Germany would take this step. Nevertheless: All in all, organic farming is extremely competitive, says the agricultural economist.
Every seventh farm in Germany is now managed organically. And the incomes for organic farmers are statistically higher. The main reason for this is the eco-premium. But the Thünen Institute has found that the location often decides whether organic farming or conventional farming pays off. And milk farmers who have an organic farm are significantly worse off in terms of earnings than their colleagues who practice organic arable farming.
There is also another problem: last year, sales in the organic sector fell by 3.5 percent for the first time in years. However, Rahmann does not see this as a low, just a lull: “Many people ate at home during the Corona period, had money for organic food. Now more people are going to the canteens again and sales have returned to normal.”
Discounters benefit from the boom
Add to that the high inflation. The classic organic specialist trade suffers from this in particular. Sales fell from 2.34 billion euros in 2021 to 2.13 billion euros last year – a drop of nine percent. Supermarkets and discounters, on the other hand, are a success story: They were able to increase their sales by 3.2 percent to 10.2 billion euros. They also continuously increased their organic range, their share is now 62 percent.
Rahmann thinks it’s right that consumers are increasingly turning to cheaper organic brands: “This is the only way to increase organic farming. Specialist stores alone can’t do it.” The federal government has set a clear goal for this: by 2030, 30 percent of the area in Germany should be organically farmed. That would correspond to an area of five million hectares. But there is still a long way to go: at the beginning of 2022, just 1.8 million hectares were being farmed organically.
Animal welfare without organic
In the milking parlor at farmer Pöhl they don’t regret the step back. Her cows are kept in an open-air barn, in the spring they come out to pasture. The calves are raised by the suckler cows. “Organic or not, everything is going as before in the barn,” says Jenny Pöhl. “The forms of husbandry that we have implemented here in the company have become established,” says her husband.
The price statistics show the market pressure. And she is right in her decision: the price of organic products rose by an average of 6.6 percent last year; conventional goods, on the other hand, by more than twelve percent.