Climate change is clouding the harvest balance: Less grain and fruit – prices are rising

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Climate change is affecting the harvest balance
Less grain and fruit – prices are rising

Safe harvests cannot be taken for granted, said Agriculture Minister Klöckner. Despite the long-term optimism among farmers, the initial results are rather sobering. Lower quantities also have an impact on prices.

How the summer weather turns out is of particular interest to many for leisure and holidays. In the fields, however, the business opportunities for farmers are decided every year. And the 2021 harvest looks disappointing after difficult conditions in many regions of Germany. Not only after the floods in the west, which also destroyed fields, did the climate impacts come more into focus. Minister Julia Klöckner said at the presentation of the Harvest reportMany farmers had been optimistic about their expectations for a long time this time.

“In many places, however, harvesting work has been and will be slowed down by showers and thunderstorms, which means that yields and quality are suffering.” One consequence is also fungal attack. In some fields, the harvest even has to be plowed under with a bleeding heart. Overall, the result is below average, but it varies from region to region.

A grain quantity of 42.1 million tons is expected, as the Federal Ministry of Agriculture announced – 2.7 percent less than in the previous year and 4.8 percent less than the average for 2015 to 2020 .5 percent below the previous year’s figure, although the acreage was 4.4 percent larger. According to the report, rapeseed is once again showing the previous year’s level of around 3.5 million tons.

The results for fruit and vegetables are probably below average. The reason are growth delays due to low temperatures and little sun. Because the soil was too wet, there were also problems harvesting vegetables on time. With grass and clover as animal feed, the situation has mostly eased after several dry years.

The basis of the official harvest report is determined yields for several thousand fields nationwide. The German Farmers’ Association wants to take stock of the harvest on Friday.

Is bread getting more expensive?

Klöckner emphasized that hardly any economic sector is as exposed to extreme weather as agriculture. During her tenure alone, there was a drought wave at the beginning of 2018, now severe flood damage after heavy rain, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. “Safe harvests cannot be taken for granted,” said the CDU minister. And in the end, sooner or later, consumers would feel that too.

Acute price effects can currently be seen, as can be seen from the harvest report. Since the results are now worse than expected, producer prices for grain and rapeseed have risen in recent weeks – encouraging for arable farmers, a burden for livestock farmers when buying feed. However, the effects on consumer prices depend on how much products are processed and traded on their way to the supermarket. “Unlike the producer price for bread wheat, which rises or falls depending on the market situation, the consumer price for toast rises linearly,” says the harvest report. Because higher wage and energy costs have a bigger impact than raw material costs. In the case of fresh fruit and vegetables, however, fluctuations in the harvest had a direct effect.

Klöckner presents “arable farming strategy” – NABU: Nothing new

In order to better arm fields and meadows against climate change and to protect the soil, the ministry now has a “Agricultural strategy“presented with perspectives up to 2035 – based on an initial discussion paper and a subsequent exchange with farmers and associations as” Praktiker-Tüv “, as Klöckner called it.

A number of measures are listed, also accompanied by funding offers. One goal is more diversity in the fields. Farms should grow more crops in alternation – not just wheat, corn and barley, but also spelled, oats, soy and peas or beans. The build-up of humus in the soil is also to be promoted. Because the larger the proportion, the longer and more soils could store carbon.

New varieties of plants and digital technology should also help, as Klöckner said. For example, sensors can be used to adjust the tire pressure of vehicles in the field in order to avoid soil compaction. Criticism came from environmentalists. Instead of implementing ambitious measures together with the environmental department, the Ministry of Agriculture published a summary of mostly already known individual measures shortly before the federal election, explained the Nature Conservation Union (Nabu).