More than 2,300 dairy farmers in Germany stopped working last year. The number of dairy farms decreased by 4.4 percent to 50,581. The German dairy herd has been shrinking for 10 years and that trend continued last year. The number of cows decreased by 2.5 percent to approximately 3.7 million animals. The average production per cow did increase, from 8,500 to 8,780 kilos.
This is reported by the BLE, the federal agency for agriculture and food supply, based on its provisional statistical data for 2023.
Dairy consumption is declining
The BLE also publishes figures on dairy consumption. This is decreasing, according to the BLE, probably in favor of plant-based alternatives to butter, cheese and milk. Retail prices of dairy products are also falling only slowly. Cheese consumption per capita fell from 24.6 to 23.8 kilos; drinking milk consumption has fallen by one percent to less than 46 liters per person; a record low.
The production of drinking milk has also decreased by 1 percent to approximately 4.2 million tons. This still leaves Germany at a self-sufficiency rate of 107 percent (-0.6 percentage points).
Cheese production is increasing
Cheese production increased last year from 2.64 million tons in 2022 to 2.66 million tons. German cheese exports reached the highest value (+6.6 percent) since 1992 at 1.41 million, according to the BLE.
While the production of butter, milk fat and milk fat products in total increased only slightly by 1.8 percent to 481,000 tons, butter production fell by almost four percent last year. Exports increased by more than 4.2 percent, while imports fell by more than ten percent. Per capita consumption of butter, milk fat and milk fat products fell by 1.4 percent to 5.56 kilograms (in butter value). Due to lower consumption, the self-sufficiency rate for butter, milk fat and milk fat products rose to 102 percent, according to the BLE.
