Status: 09/15/2021 6:44 a.m.
Low pig prices and demands for more animal and environmental protection: Pig farmers are under massive pressure. Industry representatives are now even proposing an exit bonus.
With every pig sold, farmers are currently making a loss, complains the President of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), Joachim Rukwied. The catastrophic market situation is threatening the very existence of many companies. The managing director of the interest group of pig farmers in Germany (ISN), Torsten Staack, states: “We have a profound structural crisis here that has been going on for a year and a half.”
The mood among farmers who raise piglets or fatten pigs is miserable. In the short term, the interest group of pig farmers is therefore demanding bridging aid from the state. The industry would like to talk about this today at a crisis meeting with Federal Agriculture Minister Julian Klöckner.
Pig prices are falling, animal welfare demands are rising
While pig prices are plummeting, expectations of animal and climate protection are rising. Farmers should convert their stalls to give their animals more space and exercise. In addition, they should be more environmentally friendly. All of this costs and puts pressure on companies. Many feel abandoned by politics.
More sustainable animal husbandry has been discussed there for years, but it has not yet been determined whether the farmers should be given more support when converting their stables and, if so, how exactly. “To this day there is no sustainable financing concept,” says the German Farmers’ Association. But this will probably only be decided after the federal election.
Exit bonus as a possible way out
For many pig farmers, the prospect currently seems so hopeless that there is even public discussion of an exit bonus, i.e. money from the state that should make it easier to say goodbye to animal husbandry. So far, this has been talked about behind closed doors. Now the proposal comes officially from its own lobby group.
“We propose a so-called future bonus,” explains Torsten Staack from ISN to the NDR. This should include both money for a scrapping bonus, with which farmers could demolish or convert their old stables, and an exit bonus for those professional colleagues who want to stop keeping animals. The German Farmers’ Association leaves the question of how it assesses the idea of an exit bonus unanswered.
Causes of low prices: swine fever and pandemic
The main reason for the current crisis is the low pig prices. While the farmers received 2.03 euros per kilogram of pork at the beginning of 2020, the price is only 1.25 euros today. After various deductions, according to the ISN, this means a low price of around 115 euros per pig.
There are many reasons for the price crisis. As a result of the rampant African swine fever (ASF), for example, the export of pork to many third countries outside the European Union was no longer possible, explains the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Countries like China had banned the import of pork from Germany after the first case here in the country for fear of the animal disease.
In particular, for the sale of so-called slaughter by-products such as ears, paws and heads, which are not sold here, export is of the greatest importance, says Staack. “For this reason alone, exporting the entire pig is essential, and therefore also from a sustainability point of view,” he says.
For pork, farmers in Germany currently receive around 40 percent less than in the previous year.
Image: dpa
Pork oversupply
Meanwhile, Spain and other EU countries have problems with exporting to China, so that surpluses are created on the European internal market, explains a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture. So there is just too much pork for sale right now. The oversupply depresses prices. That is why, according to the Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (AMI), the cold stores are “more full than ever”.
In addition, people in Germany are eating less and less pork. The Ministry of Agriculture in Berlin writes that demand is falling. In addition, closed restaurants and the lack of major events caused sales to collapse, according to the German Farmers’ Association. The companies have not recovered from this to this day.
Greenpeace: animal keeper and government “jointly responsible”
However, the agricultural expert of the environmental protection organization Greenpeace, Martin Hofstetter, thinks that the pig farmers are “largely responsible” for the current misery. Until a few years ago, they had massively expanded their animal populations. This would mean that they would not have taken precautions in good time for fluctuations in the market.
But Greenpeace also criticizes the federal government. The grand coalition had failed to provide incentives in good time so that animal owners with more animal welfare could produce less mass. According to the organization, this would have enabled the supply to be reduced at an early stage and prices stabilized.
In order to protect the climate, the environment and animals, Greenpeace has long been calling for the number of farm animals in Germany to be halved – among other things through stricter laws for animal husbandry and fertilization, through more controls and a ban on the use of reserve antibiotics in stables.
The Thünen Institute – a federal research facility of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture – considers a reduction in the number of animals to be the wrong approach. A reduced German supply would quickly lead to the meat being imported from other countries. “That would not serve climate protection,” it says from the institute.
Above all, the Thünen Institute advocates increasing people’s nutritional skills with educational offers, because too much meat is still being eaten. The Federal Environment Ministry also writes at the request of the NDR, in principle, a “reduced meat consumption” with a corresponding reduction in animal populations is indicated and also corresponds to the health-related recommendations of the German Nutrition Society (DGE).