Meat consumption in Germany has been falling steadily for years.
More and more farmers are converting, some are now relying on hemp and wine cultivation - also in Lower Saxony.
Bad Iburg - After 750 years it's over: No more pigs will be kept on the farm of the Brinkmann family in Bad Iburg near Osnabrück - it's no longer worth it.
"That makes me sad," says Jan Brinkmann.
The young farmer made the decision with his father and brother Henrik.
In recent years, the establishment of other mainstays has started: Brinkmann has gone under the winegrowers and was one of the first winegrowers in Lower Saxony.
He also grows hemp.
And he ordered sunflower seed for the first time a few days before the start of the Ukraine war, as reported by hna.de.
Upheaval in Lower Saxony's agriculture: Meat production is becoming less and less worthwhile
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Upheaval: Farmers Henrik (left) and Jan Brinkmann have switched.
Pig farming was abandoned.
Instead, the focus is now on the cultivation of wine, hemp (photo) and sunflowers.
© Riso Gentsch/dpa
"We no longer just want to deliver our products somewhere, we want to bring the added value back to our own farm," says Brinkmann.
Jan Brinkmann and his brother Henrik now want to focus more on self-made products that are sold to end customers in their own farm shop: their own wine, their own hemp and sunflower oils.
Niche products instead of mass-produced goods.
The pig farmers, and among them especially the piglet producers, have gone through difficult economic times in the past few months.
"For two and a half years there have been no more piglet prices that cover costs," says Albert Hortmann-Scholten from the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture.
The loss per animal is between 40 and 50 euros.
Since piglet stalls have to be heated more than fattening stalls, the extreme increase in energy costs also has a greater impact here: This winter, production costs will increase by up to eight euros per piglet, says Hortmann-Scholten, referring to calculations by the Chamber of Agriculture.
Hemp cultivation instead of pig farming - Lower Saxony's farmers face change
Like the Brinkmanns, many piglet producers are currently faced with the question: continue or stop?
For him, the matter was decided quickly, says Jan Brinkmann: "We should have invested two and a half million euros in modernizing our stables - we never saw that again with the pigs."
Meat consumption in Germany has been falling for years, and the number of animals has also decreased.
This is revealed by the number of pigs slaughtered in Germany: In 2016, almost 60 million animals were slaughtered in Germany.
Last year there were 52 million animals, and this year there will be fewer than 50 million animals, as reported by Josef Efken from the Thünen Institute in Braunschweig.
German politics partly responsible for the difficult economic situation of meat producers
So is the fact that more and more farmers are giving up animal husbandry nothing but a normal market reaction?
Young farmer Brinkmann says no - and blames politics in Germany for the difficult economic situation in the pig industry.
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Hemp plants in a field (icon image).
© Daniel Vogl/dpa
Because significantly more farmers are giving up than would be expected from the decline in meat consumption.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the number of pigs fell by 20.8 percent or 5.8 million animals from 2012 to 2022.
The number of companies shrank significantly more: it fell by 41.0 percent - 12,400 companies gave up in the period.
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So far, the cultivation of hemp has only played a niche role in Lower Saxony, but the importance of the crop is gradually increasing.
In Göttingen, the police discovered a professional hemp plantation with 1,500 cannabis plants in a 64-year-old man.
List of rubrics: © Riso Gentsch/dpa