Aldi lowers meat prices - and pig farmers continue to slide into the crisis

Created: 07/08/2022, 18:04

The idyllic appearance is deceptive.

Piglets are less and less in demand because producers and fatteners can no longer cover their costs with exploding feed and energy costs and falling revenues.

© Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/dpa

Exploding feed costs and falling meat prices are currently a burden for pig farmers in the Diepholz district.

The situation is so tense that stables are already empty.

District of Diepholz – Pig farmers in Lower Saxony are slipping into an existential crisis: Falling prices and increasing requirements, cheap competition from abroad and limited export opportunities due to African swine fever make life difficult for them.

This swine crisis is taking its toll, with many in the industry looking black.

And Aldi is also lowering the prices for pork.

Committed business owners such as Nadine and Heinrich Henke from Bruchhausen-Vilsen fight with heart and soul for a perspective.

"Five times D" is her solution.

“This means that retailers must first offer meat from animals that were born, raised, fattened, slaughtered and processed in Germany.

This has to be sold at fair prices for the producers and clearly labeled,” Heinrich and Nadine Henke described their strategy last year together with Jürgen Langhorst from Diepholz – and received a lot of approval from their professional colleagues.

This is reported by kreiszeitung.de.

Aldi lowers meat prices: 5 D meat products only not on the shelves at Edeka

With the exception of Edeka, according to Heinrich Henke (Brokser Sauen), the large grocery chains have 5 D meat products on their shelves.

"But now Aldi is stabbing us in the back," says the farmer from Bruchhausen-Vilsen about the announced meat price reduction at the discounter.

"Of course I can understand the consumers," emphasizes the farmer, who keeps 1,250 sows with his wife Nadine in accordance with the high German animal welfare and environmental standards.

But the pressure on producers is now even greater.

For example, there are no longer any buyers for boar fattening, unlike in the past.

Heinrich Henke is therefore faced with a difficult decision: "We will probably have to castrate all the boar piglets."

The farmer from Bruchhausen-Vilsen is deeply opposed to this - just like the previous docking of the tails.

One has long been on the way to stopping that: "We don't want to manipulate the animals." Between 18,000 and 20,000 piglets are born on the Brokser sow farm every year.

A feat of strength, because there is also a shortage of employees in agriculture: "In terms of work, most companies are already on the gums," says Heinrich Henke, now a 70-hour week is "nice".

Cattle association boss: situation in the pig farmer industry fatal

Patrick Wilkens, Managing Director of the Raiffeisen-Viehverbund (RVV) based in Twistringen, is currently observing a "transformation process" and "structural break".

The pig farmers would have survived the losses in the Corona period to some extent, the markets had stabilized.

But now their situation is fatal: "The producers can no longer produce at these prices."

The war in Ukraine has literally caused animal feed prices to explode, as have energy costs.

Reserves have been used up on many farms.

The result: either the pig farmers give up voluntarily, or the banks decide to do so.

In this case, nature dictates the dynamics: It takes about eight months from the birth of the piglet to the fattening pig that is ready for slaughter.

The peak of the crisis has therefore not yet been reached.

But a strong indication of this is the number of slaughter sows – animals that are sold by piglet producers and no longer produce offspring.

The proportion of slaughter sows has increased by 20 percent, reports Patrick Wilkens.

This is possibly just the tip of the iceberg: There are only two slaughterhouses left for these sows, reports the RVV managing director.

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Consumers have to resort to meat products from abroad

It is unclear how many farmers are still waiting for a slaughter date for their breeding sows.

According to the RVV managing director, past experience suggests that in January or February only about 70 percent of the pigs are still on the market than three years ago.

"If consumption remained the same, one hundred percent self-sufficiency would no longer be achieved," says Patrick Wilkens, describing the consequences for the pork market if this decline were to be confirmed.

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Inevitably, consumers would therefore have to resort to meat products from pigs from abroad that were not grown under the animal welfare regulations applicable in Germany.

District farmer Wilken Hartje, himself a pig farmer, can still well remember a degree of self-sufficiency of less than 100 percent.

That was always the case in the 1970s and 1980s.

He explains how radically and rapidly pig farming is changing with a look at the pig statistics: “In Germany we have now reached the number of animals that we had 32 years ago.

In just four years, as many animals have been removed as have been added in the previous 28 years.”

Aldi lowers the price drop for pork: pigsties remain empty – or the number of animals is reduced

From conversations with colleagues, Wilken Hartje knows that stables are often left empty - or that farm owners reduce the number of their sows and fattening pigs significantly because they no longer earn anything from them.

On the contrary: "Stables are no longer built," says the district farmer.

Many pig farmers would have lost perspective.

It's the price in the supermarket or in discounters like Aldi that decides everything in the end.

"Retailers squeeze everyone," Wilken Hartje puts it deliberately drastically.

Because he can only lure customers into the shops through the price.

The development is complex.

Wilken Hartje describes what farmers currently need: "Good harvest weather - and good barbecue weather!"