Directly following tomatoes and carrots are
onions, ranked at no.3 of the most popular vegetables. The current harvest, cold stored, will last until next spring - but the dry weather certainly has had consequences for the onion harvest: the 2018 yields dropped by ten tons per hectare.
According to the Federal Information Center for Agriculture (BZL), onions with a per capita consumption of 8.8 kilograms of fresh produce (including processed products) rank 3rd among the best-selling vegetables.
Around 95 percent of German onion production is accounted for by summer socks, which are harvested mainly in August and September. About 75 percent of the total production ends up in cold storages and extend out into spring, according to the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food.
Reduction of cultivated area
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the German acreage for onions was 11,368 hectares in 2018, marking a slight decline for the first time in many years. The production volume also decreased from 541,354 tons (2017: 11,781 hectares) to 409,504 tons. The reason for this, along with the decrease in area, is the long dry season, which led to a fall in yields from 46 to 36 tonnes per hectare. 89 percent of the total area of onion cultivation is in Lower Saxony and Bavaria, followed by Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony-Anhalt.