Germany: Pig population has dropped by 18.2% since 2020
On the reference date of 3 November 2022, 21.3 million pigs were kept in Germany, according to provisional results. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that the number of pigs decreased by 1.01 million, or 4.5%, compared with the livestock survey of 3 May 2022. This was the fourth significant decrease in a row since the survey of 3 November 2020, and the pig population has dropped to a new low. Compared with the value of the previous year, as at 3 November 2021, the number of pigs declined by 10.2%, or 2.43 million. On a two-year comparison, the pig population decreased by as much as 18.2%, or 4.74 million.
The ten-year comparison also shows downward trends in farms and pigs: the number of pigs has decreased by 24.7% or 7.0 million animals since 2012, while the number of farms has decreased even more by 43.3% (12,900 farms). As the number of farms decreased more than the number of kept pigs, the average pig population increased from 949 to 1,259 pigs per farm in the last ten years.
Pig stocks and farm numbers have declined, mainly due to the persistently difficult economic situation of many farmers, amid significant increases in energy, fertilizer and feed costs and thus higher production costs. In this context, the prices of animal products have also increased significantly.
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