Russia is cutting gas supplies, and farmers are already warning of a food shortage. Because gas is also indispensable for production in fields and in stables. The sector should therefore have priority, they demand.
The President of the German Farmers’ Association, Joachim Rukwied, has warned of a dramatic food shortage in Germany if agriculture is not given priority in gas distribution. “Without gas, no milk, no butter, no yoghurt,” Rukwied told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “We need gas prioritization for the entire agri-food sector.”
The development and the declaration of the alert level of the gas emergency plan made him very concerned, said Ruckwied. “To ensure stable harvests, the availability of fertilizers is essential. We need gas for the production of nitrogen fertilizers.” Should this only be available to a limited extent or should it cease to exist, “yields would immediately collapse by 30 to 40 percent”.
Rukwied called on the federal government to make a course correction. “Food security is not a matter of course,” said the farmers’ president. Last week, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck of the Greens declared the second crisis level in the gas emergency plan, the so-called alarm level, because of the reduced Russian deliveries.
Meanwhile, a survey by the Ifo Institute showed that Germans will have to prepare for further increases in food prices in the coming months. Almost every retailer is planning higher prices. Food already cost an average of 12.7 percent more in June than a year earlier. According to a study by the Institute for Macroeconomics and Economic Research, more than half of Germans with lower incomes therefore want to buy less food.
