‘Catastrophic wheat harvest: farmers in the region harvest a third less wheat’ headlines the Landbote. In the report, which also appears in the Tages-Anzeiger, the manager of the grain collection centre in Thalheim an der Thur, Christian Blaser, says: ‘We have never had such a poor bread wheat harvest as this year’. The yield has plummeted by around a third. Some farmers have suffered a loss of up to 50 per cent. The former head of the grain collection centre, Rolf Häusler, told SRF's Tagesschau: 'A hundred years ago, that would have meant starvation. Today, this amount is simply imported.'

Problems in Germany too

The poor harvest is not limited to Switzerland. The German agricultural newspaper also reports on the poor wheat harvest in 2024. Germany, a grain-producing country, will barely be able to cover its needs this year. According to the German Raiffeisen Association (DRV), Germany is facing its worst grain harvest in years. Only in the drought year of 2018 was the yield even worse. ‘According to the DRV, the reasons for the poor result are a further reduction in acreage and lower yields per hectare. These were due to the unstable weather with heavy rainfall in some areas and a lack of warmth and sunshine. In addition, increasing restrictions on fertilisation and plant protection led to further declines in yields.’ The President of the German Farmers' Association also draws a sobering conclusion, as «cash» reports. The downward trend in grain production that has been ongoing for years has continued. He is ‘doubly disappointed’ about the 2024 harvest. In addition to the weaker results, the prices that farms can currently achieve for their grain have come under even greater pressure. ‘This is not really understandable,’ said the farmer president. This is because the harvest was also weaker in France and Spain, for example, and supplies are tight globally. The indicators therefore actually point to price stabilisation. One thing is clear: ‘As farmers, we need significantly higher producer prices again in the short term in order to be able to produce economically.’

Negative combination for farms

However, the combination of low yields and low prices is now having a negative impact on farms, as Rukwied emphasised. In addition, the operating costs for energy, for example, remain high. As a result, economic grain cultivation is hardly possible in Germany. The association also sees restrictions and requirements on the use of pesticides and fertilisers as a critical factor. Rukwied warned that politicians need to rethink this quickly. Otherwise there is a risk that more and more feed wheat will be produced instead of higher quality bread wheat.

Alarming contamination with carcinogenic fungi

The reports in the Swiss media focus mainly on the bad weather with lots of rainfall. The Tages-Anzeiger wrote: ‘Rain in autumn, rain in spring and rain at the beginning of summer. That was too much for the wheat.’ Moisture and a lack of warmth hinder growth. There is also the fungal infestation. ‘All collection centre managers describe the situation with mycotoxin contamination in wheat as bad, almost dramatic’, told «Schweizer Bauer». If the contamination with mycotoxins is too high, the wheat can no longer even be fed to the animals. The only option then is to utilise it in the biogas plant. The effort and costs involved in sowing, cultivating and harvesting the crop are not worth it. The energy costs and CO2 emissions were in vain. All that remains is the food waste. So far, 100 tonnes of wheat have had to be rejected at the Thalheim collection point due to excessive mycotoxin contamination.

Dispensing with plant protection as a danger

According to a report in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, Agroscope researcher Dario Fossati from the Agroscope Federal Research Centre in Changins VD also speaks of the ‘worst wheat harvest in 35 years’. The wet conditions at ear blossom led to harmful grain fungi. swiss-food.ch has already reported on the correlations. One speaks of an infestation with Fusarium. This is a genus of mould fungi that is widespread throughout the world. They cause rot, lead to crop losses and contamination of the harvested crop with toxins, so-called mycotoxins, which jeopardise human and animal health even in small quantities. The dangerous mycotoxins are carcinogenic and pose a threat to food safety. The fungal toxins can be contained with plant protection products. However, without adequate plant protection, consumption poses a risk. We finally need authorisation procedures that bring innovations in plant protection to farmers instead of preventing them – also in the interests of human and animal health.

Hoping for more resistant wheat varieties

In the Tages-Anzeiger, Fossati also points out a connection to agricultural practice. ‘If there was maize in the same place before the wheat and the soil was worked without a plough, the cereal fungus spreads more easily.’ Good agricultural practices are very important, but they are not enough: in addition to urgent authorisation and the precise use of modern plant protection products, more resistant wheat varieties could also help. To bring them to market quickly, there needs to be openness to technology and rapid authorisation procedures, including for modern breeding methods – both of which are still lacking, particularly in Switzerland and Europe. And so food waste continues to take place on the fields and in front of everyone's eyes – and food that we could actually produce here in Switzerland is imported.