Germans increasingly buying organic food - but production lags

The German organic food market showed significant growth in 2025 despite the higher prices compared to non-organic food, but agricultural production is lagging, new industry figures show.

Sales grew by 8%, initial figures for 2025 show, in a report by the German Farmers' Association seen by dpa. Consumers are spending extra money to buy organic food again, as the market gradually recovers since 2022, when inflation put many shoppers off the extra expenditure, the report said.

But although demand is growing, production is stagnating.

Organic food sales are expected to significantly exceed the €18 billion ($21 billion) mark this year, the report said, with shoppers mainly buying retail chains' own organic brands.

In terms of outlets, health food retailers supermarkets and drugstores all reported an uptick in sales of organic goods after a lengthy dry spell.

But organic farming is lagging behind the growing demand, the farmers' association report said. Farmers are still only gradually switching to organic farming, the latest figures showed.

There was only marginal growth in the amount of land used for organic farming, Agriculture Ministry data shows, with 11.5% of farmland used for organic goods, up from 11.4% in 2023. The previous government set a target of 30% by 2030. But the number of organic farms actually fell by 2.2% to 35,881 last year, and their share is now only 14.1% overall.

That means that at the start of the year, the supply of organic food is in danger of lagging behind demand, with the risk that retailers would only be able to meet demand through imports, the organic industry association said.