Vegetable consumption: 27 percent are tomatoes

15-Jun-2023 - Germany

With consumption of over 30 kilograms per person in the 2021/22 marketing year, tomatoes are the Germans' favorite vegetable. They also include processed products such as ketchup. At 101,800 tons, the harvest volume of domestic tomatoes decreased slightly. This represents a continuation of the trend since 2019. Consumer prices increased by almost 25 percentage points in 2022 compared to the previous year.

First Corona, then the war in Ukraine - tomatoes are getting more expensive. With an index of 189.4, tomatoes were significantly more expensive in March 2023 than in the same month last year (index 164.8), according to the Federal Statistical Office. Yet tomatoes are still the Germans' favorite vegetable. According to the Federal Agricultural Information Center (BZL), per capita consumption is 30.5 kg in the 2021/22 marketing year, which accounts for more than 27 percent of total vegetable consumption; this figure also includes processed products such as ketchup or tomato paste.

Thus, higher prices could also have an impact on consumption in the meantime. In the 2020/21 financial year, consumption was still 31.5 kilograms per person - a drop of 3.2 percent. Overall, Germans consumed 2.54 million tons of tomatoes in 2021/22, according to preliminary BZL figures (2020/21: 2.62 million tons).

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Crop volume in Germany continues to decline

Since 2019, the amount harvested under glass in Germany has been declining. In the 2021/22 marketing year, the harvest amounted to 101,800 tons - 0.3 percent less than in the previous year. The self-sufficiency rate is 3.5 percent. Most fresh tomatoes come from neighboring countries. Nearly 75 percent of fresh imports in calendar year 2022 came from the Netherlands and Spain:

	2021	2022
Netherlands	386.854	382.953
Spain	164.937	171.355
Belgium	69.716	66.019
Morocco	54.696	46.482
Italy	21.970	22.778
France	24.535	19.772
Poland	11.775	14.880
Other	21.640	18.570
Total	756.123	742.809

(Import weight in tons per year)

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

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