German agricultural businesses in Germany harvested a total of 4.2 million tons of vegetables in the year 2024. The total harvest volume has thus increased by 6.1 percent compared to the previous year and is the second-highest since 2012, with the exception of the year 2021, when 4.3 million tons of vegetables were harvested.
According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the total area for vegetable cultivation increased by 3.2 percent compared to the previous year to 126,800 hectares. The area for vegetable cultivation in 2024 was thus 2.9 percent above the long-term average (2012 to 2023). The number of vegetable-producing businesses decreased by 4.4 percent from 6,100 in the previous full survey in the year 2020 to 5,830. Since 2012, the number of these businesses has decreased by 19.0 percent.
In the open field, 5,630 businesses in the year 2024 cultivated vegetables on 125,550 hectares, which represents an increase of 3.3 percent in the open field cultivation area compared to the previous year. Regionally, the largest cultivation areas in the open field in the year 2024 were in North Rhine-Westphalia with 28,200 hectares, Lower Saxony with 24,400 hectares, Bavaria with 16,500 hectares and Rhineland-Palatinate with 16,400 hectares.
Beets or carrots were, as in the previous years, the vegetable type with the largest harvest in Germany in the open field in the year 2024, with 850,600 tons. The harvest volume increased by 6.8 percent, while the cultivation area increased by 2.3 percent compared to the previous year. The vegetable type with the second-largest harvest was again onions with 744,400 tons (+11.7 percent), followed by white cabbage with 427,100 tons (+7.2 percent), pickling cucumbers with 213,700 tons (+10.3 percent) and ice lettuce with 127,800 tons (+5.4 percent).
In terms of the total vegetable cultivation area in the open field, carrots in the year 2024 were in third place behind spinach with 19,760 hectares of arable land (-3.0 percent) and onions with 17,700 hectares (+17.4 percent), followed by white cabbage with 6,150 hectares (+15.9 percent) and pickling squash with 5,260 hectares (-0.7 percent).
Ecological farming businesses cultivated a total of 529,800 tons of vegetables on 19,350 hectares, which corresponds to 15.3 percent of the total vegetable cultivation area and 12.7 percent of the total harvest volume. Compared to the previous year, the area of ecological vegetable cultivation increased by 5.0 percent and the corresponding harvest volume by 10.4 percent.
The largest cultivation area in ecological vegetable cultivation in the year 2024 was again for carrots with 3,350 hectares (17.3 percent), followed by pickling squash with 2,020 hectares (10.4 percent), onions with 1,880 hectares (9.7 percent) and asparagus with 1,780 hectares (9.2 percent). Especially high percentages of ecological production in the total harvest volume were seen for the vegetable types red beet with 40.8 percent, pickling squash with 36.3 percent, zucchini with 33.0 percent and fresh beans with 23.4 percent and carrots with 22.8 percent.