More domestic rapeseed processed in Germany

The share of imported rapeseed in processing by German oil mills declined in the first half of the 2021-’22 season. The share of domestic batches increased correspondingly.

According to information published by the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE), traders at the co-op and wholesale level in Germany by the end of December had taken delivery of around 2.2 million metric tons of rapeseed. This was up 116,500 tons on the same period a year earlier. On the other hand, in the first half of the marketing year 2021-’22, rapeseed processed by German oil mills amounted to around 4.7 million tons. This was down around 1.4 percent on the period July to December 2020. The amounts of rapeseed oil and meal obtained were correspondingly smaller.

Whereas German oil mills processed increasingly less German rapeseed in recent years, the share rose over the first five months of the current crop year. According to calculations made by Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (mbH), 47 percent came from Germany, which translates to a 43 percent increase. In other words, the ratio of domestic and imported rapeseed was nearly balanced for the first time in five years. Until 2016-’17, with harvests exceeding 4.3 million tons per year, more than half of the rapeseed supplied to German oil mills was domestic.

The Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e.V. (UFOP) has underlined the importance of and need for imports to utilize the capacities of the oil mills, which processed approximately 9.5 million tons of seed in 2021. The association is therefore watching the situation of conflict in Ukraine with concern, as the country is one of the most important suppliers to Germany, not only of rapeseed. Against this background and in view of the continued high level of producer prices, UFOP recommends that producers secure these prices in commodities futures and fully use the farms’ potential for rapeseed production when sowing while taking into account the requirements of crop rotation.