The weather has had a massive impact on the wheat harvest in many regions of Germany. The quantity is right, but the quality is not. New rules for fertilization apparently contributed to this.
Thousands of tons of wheat are stored in the Raiffeisen Hallertau-Jura warehouse in Seuversholz, Upper Bavaria. The silos are full to the roof. And yet, authorized signatory Christian Hufsky looks skeptically at the grains in his hands. He keeps discovering small seedlings: “Unfortunately, this year we had a three-week period of rain that no one wanted.”
Farmers could not harvest their wheat. In some cases the grains were already beginning to sprout from the stalk. The result: There is significantly less bread wheat this year. “It’s much, much less quality wheat,” Hufsky says. Instead, he has thousands of tons of feed wheat in his warehouses.
Wheat is hardly suitable for baking
In normal years, according to the Bavarian State Agricultural Institute, most of the harvest is bakeable. It can therefore be ground and further processed into flour. This year that is not the case with the total of around 3.6 million tons of wheat in Bavaria. A lot of wheat is of poor quality. This does not mean that there are unhealthy substances or fungi in the grain. But something crucial is missing: the protein.
This problem exists in many regions of Germany. This is how the Max Rubner Institute, which monitors the quality of the grain harvest for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, comes to the conclusion: In addition to Bavaria, the wheat harvest in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt is also “striking” in terms of its low protein content.
There are also significant losses in quality in the harvest in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. According to the Max Rubner Institute, the rain “caused significant damage to the harvested wheat stocks” in terms of quality.
Mills need more supra-regional grain
The result: supplying the mills with German raw materials is becoming more difficult, as the Association of German Mills reported when asked. It is assumed that, despite the poor harvest this year, there should be enough quality grain available from Germany in purely mathematical terms. But that varies greatly regionally. “Flows of goods will have to change, procurement will have to take place supra-regionally,” said the association.
Authorized representative Hufsky from Raiffeisen Hallertau-Jura in Bavaria is therefore looking at the international grain market with some concern. French wheat is already increasingly coming to Germany via the Rhine. In his opinion, Austria and Hungary are also pushing into the German market. And because so much feed grain was harvested this year, the market price in this area is under great pressure. For German farmers, this ultimately means declining yields.
New restrictions on fertilization
“I’ve never had such weak wheat before.” Rudi Sagberger stands in his mill near Landshut in Lower Bavaria. He is chairman of the board of the Bavarian Müller Association. For him, the poor quality of the wheat is also homemade. Keyword: Fertilizer Ordinance. This stipulates that in certain areas where too much nitrate is measured in the groundwater, farmers are allowed to fertilize less. This is intended to reduce nitrate levels.
This year the regulation passed for the first time. “The farmer is no longer allowed to fertilize as much and therefore he had less protein.” Sagberger therefore demands that farmers should not be further restricted in fertilizing. “If we have these conditions again next year, this drought, this heat stress and little fertilization, then it will be a catastrophe.”
The Bavarian State Institute for Agriculture also says that the poor quality is “partly due to the restrictions of the fertilizer ordinance,” which affects some regions of Bavaria. But what may also have played a role, according to the state office, was the high fertilizer prices. These could also have led to farmers using less fertilizer.
Consequences for consumers
In the end, it is primarily the bakers who have to work with the flour. Stefan Geisenhofer stands with a dozen employees in his bakery in Freising. Rolls and pretzels are already ready, and he’s currently making baguettes. For him, good flour is crucial. “If the quality isn’t there, then we can’t get the volume together and then the consumer has to buy a smaller product for the same price.”
If the quality of the flour fluctuates, he can adjust his work processes. Knead longer or shorter, use more or less water and change the temperatures. From his point of view, that wouldn’t be optimal. But he’s not worried at the moment. He assumes that the flour quality is still good. If in doubt, the mills would buy quality wheat from abroad. But he doesn’t think that’s a good thing, as he has so far relied entirely on regional raw materials.