The number of calves, cows, oxen and bulls in stables and on pastures in the Ebersberg district is steadily decreasing.
But beef consumption is increasing.
Artifacts in conflict.
District
- The cattle next door is on the decline: Around 11.64 million dairy cows, beef cattle, breeding animals, suckler cows or calves were still in the stables and on the pasture from Flensburg to Berchtesgaden in 2019.
Around 310,000 fewer than a year earlier.
Cattle farming is also declining in the Ebersberg district: 37,615 animals are currently being kept, 650 fewer than a year ago.
However, beef consumption is increasing.
What is not in the stable or on the pasture comes from outside: According to the Federal Information Center for Agriculture, the level of self-sufficiency for beef is currently 97.1 percent.
People currently eat an average of ten kilos of beef per head per year, according to the data from the Federal Information Center.
And another 4.6 kilos of beef per head are used for other purposes.
For shoes, for example.
Or sofas.
Milk, meat, leather and various by-products including dog food: the beef can be completely recycled after slaughter.
And it provides food even before slaughter: milk.
Of the 37 615 cattle (the most recent figures available are as of November 3, 2019), 15 844 are dairy cows.
Versatile beef: There is not much missing for the egg-laying woolly milk sow
When it comes to making a living, farmers basically have three options: breeding cattle, dairy cattle and beef cattle.
Milk production and meat production can be coupled well.
The most recently counted 15,844 dairy cows in the stalls currently make up around 42.1 percent of the total cattle herd (2014: 42.3 percent).
Across Germany, this share climbed from 33.7 (2014) to 34.5 percent (2019) within five years.
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The five-year development of the cattle herd in the Ebersberg district.
© Southwest newspaper service
In the past, the dance around the golden calf angered the Lord God and Moses, which, as is well known, ended in a bloodbath.
Today, nutrition sometimes turns into a question of faith: "No other sector contributes so massively to the loss of biodiversity, the clearing of forests and the destruction of our climate, the endangerment of our health systems and the suffering of animals as industrial meat production," says the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is close to the Greens.
Environmental concerns and the falling meat price
But that is not the only interpretation: “Due to the bad price situation on the beef market, many small farms here are giving up cattle farming.
Scenic valleys are no longer grazed.
The danger of encroachment is great.
The attractiveness of the valleys for tourism is decreasing "- this quote comes from a report by the district office in the Ortenaukreis (Baden-Württemberg), which ends with the sentence: Anyone who wants to bring female cattle over is warmly welcome and receives" transport aid "." Such Problems have probably not yet arisen in the Ebersberg district.
The 2019/20 situation report of the German Farmers' Association also names falling prices as the reason for the decline in cattle farming.
Meat eaters benefit, meat producers tend not: For “a kilo of beef to cook” people have to work 27 minutes today, in 1970 it was 72 minutes.
Teja Banzhaf
All news from the Ebersberg district at the Ebersberger Zeitung.
