The war in Ukraine also poses challenges for the wine-growing companies in the south-west. Irrespective of this, the industry is in the midst of change.
Freiburg/Weinsberg (dpa/lsw) – The wine industry in Baden-Württemberg is struggling with the consequences of the war in Ukraine. The situation is tense, said the wine-growing associations of Baden and Württemberg. The rising raw material prices and thus significantly higher production costs – for example for packaging, glass and fertilizer – make things difficult for the companies, as the managing director of the Baden Winegrowers Association, Holger Klein, explained.
Even before the war in the Ukraine, the prices of energy and agricultural production goods such as fertilizers and pesticides had risen, said the managing director of the Württemberg Winegrowers’ Association, Hermann Morast. “In addition, there is a difficult global wine market and the resulting low revenues despite the excellent quality of our wines.”
The future economic development for viticulture is difficult to predict, explained Klein. From his point of view, it depends on how the supply of raw materials will be in the future and how raw material prices will develop. “At the moment, companies are worried about the future supply of bottles.” According to Klein, the delivery could be jeopardized by gaps in the supply chains due to the war in Ukraine, since glass production is very energy-intensive.
After all: According to Klein, the vines in Baden are very healthy. With the exception of regional hail events, the winegrowers were spared extreme weather conditions this year. “If the vegetation continues to develop as it has in the past few weeks, we can expect an early start to harvest,” said Klein.
The industry is undergoing structural change – and not only in the southwest, explained Klein and Morast. According to the State Statistical Office, there were almost 6,500 farms with vineyards in 2020 (2010: 8,297 farms), of which around 3,800 (2010: 4,839) were in the Baden wine-growing region and around 2,700 (2010: 3,458) in Württemberg. Vineyard area is the area on which wine is grown.
Above all, there are fewer smaller companies with a vineyard area of ??less than 0.3 hectares, said Morast. This is not primarily due to economic reasons, but is primarily due to a different working environment, among other things.
According to the State Statistical Office, however, larger companies have grown. The average area under vines per farm has increased from 2.9 hectares in 2010 to 3.9 hectares in 2020, an increase of 38 percent. “The number of farms is decreasing and at the same time there is an increase in the area of ??the full-time farms, so that the total area under vines in Württemberg has remained constant,” explained Morast.
Klein assumes that the development will continue. The number of companies will continue to decrease. “The remaining companies will grow significantly as a result and will be dependent on external workers. The increasing mechanization will probably result in a decrease in the number of employees.” Although a lot of manual work is still required in the vineyards, the number of workers has already decreased significantly in the period from 2010 to 2020, as reported by the State Statistical Office. Accordingly, in 2020, 34,500 people were employed in the wine-growing businesses in the southwest, 47 percent fewer than in 2010. In comparison, there are mainly fewer family and seasonal workers in viticulture.
