This year's harvest of open ground vegetables totalled around 297,700 metric tonnes, just below the previous year's amount. On the largest part of the area, cabbage, carrots and asparagus were grown. The three cabbages (white cabbage, red cabbage and savoy cabbage) accounted for 3,199 hectares of land, five percent more than in 2015. Traditionally, most cabbage areas (2,937 hectares, 92 percent) are located in the district of Dithmarschen, Germany's largest cabbage growing region.
The asparagus area expanded from 346 hectares by 39 percent to 480 hectares in 2016. In the same period, however, the number of asparagus farms fell by 43 percent. In 2004, 94 farms were established and in 2016 there were only 54 farms. Despite the difficult season, the harvest amounted to around 1,750 metric tonnes (an increase of 7 percent compared to 2015).
Open ground strawberries were produced by 84 establishments on an area of around 1,105 hectares. This includes new plantings of 273 hectares, which were not yet harvested in the survey year. As a result of the inconsistent weather in the main period, a yield of only 114.8 decitons per hectare (dt/ha) was achieved. The profit was therefore a good 15 percent below that of the previous year (135.7 dt/ha). Altogether about 10,000 metric tonnes of the popular fruits were harvested.
Almost one-fifth of the total vegetable cultivation area in the open ground area (1,129 ha) was managed according to the ecological guidelines of 74 farms. A good 13 percent of the total vegetable yield in Schleswig-Holstein was produced organically.
Source: Statistik-Nord