Germany announced the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin. The outbreak remains at one case, with no others reported, although the cause is still unknown.

The European Commission has approved the lifting of a three-kilometre protection zone around the original case and designating it as an observation zone as no new cases have been discovered, the agriculture ministry said.

This will apply until Feb. 24, then a smaller area will be under observation until April 11.

Three months must pass without a new case before Germany can be regarded as foot-and-mouth disease free.

The ministry said it is preparing an application to the World Organization for Animal Health to have Germany declared free of foot-and-mouth. This could enable export restrictions on German meat and dairy products to be lifted.

“Our determined action against foot-and-mouth is paying off,” said German agriculture minister Cem Oezdemir. “The outbreak is still restricted to one farm. This shows that the actions we took were correct and are effective.”

The EU Commission says Germany’s efforts to combat the disease would enable the regionalization principle to be used.

Under this rule, sales of meat and dairy products are only restricted from the region where the disease has been confirmed. This means that falls in German pig prices have been moderate.

Measures to contain the disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with Britain and South Korea among states imposing import bans on Germany.

—Reporting by Michael Hogan

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The country announced its first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin in the Brandenburg region. That remains the only reported case so far.

The minister, Cem Oezdemir, said that containing the disease was top priority but he wished that “no farm should close because of foot-and-mouth disease.”

The country was seeking crisis aid for farmers from the EU and was also in talks with its finance ministry, he said.

Pig prices in the country have stabilised as fears subsided that foot-and-mouth disease would spread, while the EU has indicated that German meat and dairy product sales outside the region containing the case could continue.

Some emergency measures to restrict spread of the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans, were lifted but quarantine zones remain in force.

Measures to contain the disease often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries. The UK, South Korea and Mexico imposed import bans on Germany, with the British decision causing pain to Germany’s livestock sector.

German animal disease research institute Friedrich Loeffler has said three months must pass without a new case before Germany can be regarded as foot-and-mouth free.

— Reporting by Michael Hogan

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Germany has only one case of the disease, Oezdemir said on German radio Deutschlandfunk.

Germany announced the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo on the outskirts of Berlin in the Brandenburg region.

Brandenburg’s state agriculture ministry confirmed the negative test result, saying: “At the current timepoint, there are still no indications of a spread of foot-and-mouth.”

The Brandenburg ministry said several emergency measures to contain the disease, including some restrictions on animal transport, will not be extended from Friday, but it stressed the quarantine zones around the case remain in force.

German authorities are intensively testing animals on farms in the area around the first case. Measures to contain the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with Britain, South Korea and Mexico imposing import bans on Germany this week.

Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants including cattle, pigs, sheep and goats and in past decades needed major slaughtering campaigns to eradicate.

Oezdemir said on Friday Germany will continue intensive efforts to contain the disease and win back the trust of countries which have imposed import restrictions on German agricultural products.

A spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said on Thursday Germany’s efforts to stop the disease spreading would enable the regionalisation principle to be used.

Under this EU rule, sales of meat and dairy products are only restricted from the region where the disease has been confirmed and produce from elsewhere in the affected country can still be sold inside the EU.

Oezdemir said earlier Germany’s continued access to EU markets would depend on the lack of new cases.

— Reporting by Michael Hogan

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German authorities confirmed the country’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Friday in a herd of water buffalo on the outskirts of Berlin in the Brandenburg region.

Testing of animals on farms had shown no new cases in an area of around one kilometre from the first case, the agriculture ministry in the state of Brandenburg said.

Investigations continue and the affected region has a ban on animal transport until Wednesday, it said.

Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats and in past decades needed major slaughtering campaigns to eradicate. The highly infectious disease poses no danger to humans.

Germany’s federal agriculture ministry has warned that even one case could bring exports of the country’s meat and dairy products to outside the EU to a virtual standstill.

Due to the loss of free status from foot-and-mouth disease according to the requirements of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), numerous veterinary certificates for the export of products from ruminants and pigs in particular can no longer be issued, the ministry said.

Britain on Tuesday banned imports of pork and many other meat and dairy products from Germany to try to prevent the disease spreading to Britain. Between January and October 2024, the UK imported 117,340 metric tons of pork worth 448 million pounds (C$783.9 million) from Germany.

Germany is the third largest exporter of pork to the UK with an 18 per cent market share and the second largest exporter of dairy products with a 12 per cent market share, according to Britain’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

“It means that ham, gammon and bacon as well as products like salami from Germany will not be allowed into the UK. As such we are expecting some disruption to supply,” Mandy Nevel, AHDB’s Head of Animal Health and Welfare, said.

The last cases of foot-and-mouth disease in Germany occurred in 1988, according to the FLI animal health research institute. The FLI said the disease occurs regularly in the Middle East and Africa, in many Asian countries and South America.

— Reporting by Michael Hogan

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Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats.

Measures to contain the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans though they can transmit it, are being implemented, and the affected animals have already been euthanized, said local authorities.

An exclusion zone of three kilometres and a monitoring zone of 10 kilometres have been set up, and no more products or animals may be taken out of these zones, said a federal agricultural ministry spokesperson at a regular government news conference.

Local authorities are investigating how the animals became infected, but there are no plans for measures at the federal or international level, the spokesperson added.

Germany and the European Union are officially recognised as being free of the disease. The last cases in Germany occurred in 1988, according to the FLI animal health research institute.

The FLI said the disease occurs regularly in the Middle East and Africa, in many Asian countries and in parts of South America. Illegally imported animal products from these countries pose a threat to European agriculture, it said.

— Reporting by Miranda Murray and Friederike Heine

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The Commission now estimates production of common wheat, or soft wheat, this season at 114.6 million tonnes, down from 116.1 million predicted a month ago and nine per cent below last year’s crop.

It is also the lowest volume since 2012/13, bringing the Commission into line with other recent forecasts of the EU’s main cereal crop.

The EU harvest has been dented in particular by the smallest crop in France in 40 years, as well as a sharp fall in German production as the bloc’s two biggest wheat growers endured repeated heavy rain in the past year.

In monthly supply and demand data, the Commission increased its projection of EU soft wheat imports in 2024/25 by one million tonnes to seven million but left unchanged its soft wheat export forecast for this season at 26 million tonnes.

It lowered its forecast for 2024/25 usable production of maize in the EU to 60.1 million tonnes from 61.6 million in late August, now four per cent below last season’s level.

Maize crops, harvesting of which is under way, have been hurt by summer drought and heatwaves in the east of the bloc.

Estimated EU barley production in 2024/25 was also revised down, to 50.4 million tonnes from 51.3 million a month ago, though that was six per cent above last year’s drought-hit crop.

In oilseeds, the Commission lowered its estimate of the bloc’s rapeseed output this season to 17.2 million tonnes from 18.0 million, nearly 13 per cent below last year’s level.

For sunflower seed, which has also suffered from drought in eastern Europe, the Commission cut its production forecast to 9.5 million tonnes from 9.9 million, three per cent below the previous crop.

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“Our Crop Science and Consumer Health divisions expect a slow start to the year due to market dynamics, but we feel confident in our full-year targets and the direction of our businesses,” CEO Bill Anderson said in his speech for the April 26 annual general meeting, which was posted on the company’s website on Monday.

The CEO reiterated that 2024 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), adjusted for one-off items and currency swings, would decline between three and nine per cent and that free cash flow would reach 2-3 billion euros (C$2.9 billion to $4.7 billion) up from 1.3 billion (C$1.9 billion) last year.

Anderson will face investor question at the AGM over his decision in March to pause plans to break apart the German diversified group, which includes a large pharmaceuticals business, for up to three years. He has said he would instead focus on a management overhaul, debt reduction and fending off litigation.

Major Bayer shareholder Harris Associates has told Reuters it strongly supports the decision to suspend work on breaking up the group.

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Placards depicted a farmer swinging from a gallows next to wind farms and an EU-emblazoned executioner with the words: “Green Deal equals death of Polish agriculture”, referring to the bloc’s plan to tackle climate change.

Farmers in Poland and elsewhere in the bloc have been protesting in recent months to demand the re-imposition of customs duties on agricultural imports from Ukraine that were waived after Russia’s invasion in 2022.

They say Ukraine’s farmers are flooding Europe with cheap imports that leave them unable to compete.

With hundreds of protests planned, Reuters footage from Zakret, east of Warsaw, showed farmers blocking ways into the capital. Tractors lined roads mounted with Polish flags while red flares were set off.

“We demand the withdrawal of the ‘Green Deal’ as a whole, we demand the withdrawal of the ‘Fit for 55’ (EU climate plan), the limits on all emissions, all the bans and orders,” said protest organizer Lukasz Komorowski, speaking to fellow rallying farmers at the Zakret blockade.

Quota controversy

On Wednesday, the EU reached provisional agreement to extend Ukrainian food producers’ tariff-free access to its markets until June 2025 – albeit with new limits on grain imports.

Polish protest leaders said they were not happy with the latest deal as it included the last few years as a reference for import limits. They want quotas based on figures from well before the war in Ukraine began, when imports were much lower.

“We demand quotas and that they be calculated for the period from 2000, and not as Ukraine wants 2022-2023, because that was when the (import) levels were the highest. This does not fully satisfy us, because it is not a good solution,” Slawomir Izdebski, leader of the OPZZ farmers’ union, told Reuters.

Polish police said they knew of more than 580 protests planned for Wednesday, with an estimated participation of 70,000 people.

Last Friday, the European Commission also offered concessions to farmers as it proposed an easing of rules on leaving land fallow or rotating crops.

Farmers in the Czech Republic held similar protests.

They drove an estimated 1,600 tractors and other agricultural machinery onto the streets, Barbora Pankova, a spokesperson for the Czech Agrarian Chamber, told Czech Television.

German tax proposal

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner wants to help farmers by introducing income smoothing to minimize their taxes, he said in Berlin on Wednesday, after protests over a cut to agricultural diesel subsidies.

“Income smoothing means that instead of using one financial year for tax purposes, several years are used,” Lindner said at a press conference. This would allow farmers to distribute earnings between different years to reduce the tax burden.

Lindner justified the idea arguing that agricultural yields fluctuate greatly and are therefore difficult to plan.

“I want to integrate income smoothing into the 2024 Annual Tax Act,” Lindner said.

German farmers took to the streets in tractors in December in protest at the cut to diesel subsidies as part of a government package of austerity measures.

Germany’s Bundesrat is set to approve the Growth Opportunities Act, a package offering tax relief amounting to 3.2 billion euros (C$4.71 billion) for small and medium-sized companies, on Friday.

The German government’s Growth Opportunities Act, which aims to attract new investment amid weak foreign demand and high interest rates, passed the lower house of parliament in November but then faced opposition in the Bundesrat, the legislative body that represents the 16 German states at the federal level.

The conservatives of the CDU/CSU made approval conditional on the government reversing its decision on agricultural diesel.

As the government said this was not an option, it is making other concessions to the agricultural sector, such as income smoothing.

“We are in good talks,” said Lindner, referring to the farmers’ representatives.

–Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alan Charlish, Aleksandra Szmigiel, Michael Kahn, Christian Kraemer and Maria Martinez.

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The EU has already watered down some environmental policies in response to the sometimes violent protests, but with farmers still taking to the streets this week in Belgium and France, Brussels is under pressure to do more.

Draft conclusions for an EU summit on 21-22 March, seen by Reuters, showed EU country leaders plan to ask the European Commission to work without delay on “all possible short-term measures, including those to reduce the administrative burden and achieve simplification for farmers”.

The EU should also take action to strengthen the position of farmers in the food supply chain, and ensure they can earn a fair income, the draft said.

Having already withdrawn a law to reduce pesticides and weakened some nature protection measures, the EU is looking at new proposals to ease pressures on European farmers, including a reduction in farm inspections and the possibility of exempting small farms from some environmental standards.

The crisis in the sector comes as Europe faces increasingly dire warnings from scientists about the environmental damage industrial farming is causing, and the urgent need to protect nature in the face of worsening climate change.

The EU Environment Agency this week said current EU food policies are failing to address climate change risks.

It suggested Europe consider policies to encourage less livestock farming, since shifting to plant-based proteins could help farmers reduce their reliance on imported animal feed and use less water, which climate change is making an increasingly scarce resource in drought-stricken southern Europe.

Angry farmers have staged protests from Poland, to Germany, to France and Slovenia in recent months to draw attention to numerous complaints, including cheap supermarket prices, low-cost imports from outside of Europe, and EU green policies some say are excessive.

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Heavy rain since autumn is expected to have reduced sharply wheat planting in France, Germany and Britain, and the damp end to winter has raised doubts over whether farmers will be able to switch as much as area as anticipated to spring barley.

“We have already lost some wheat volumes in France, Germany and Britain,” Maxence Devillers, an analyst with Argus, said. “But the worst may be behind us and the weather forecast for the next two weeks could help improve things.”

Weather charts showed relatively dry conditions in the week ahead in Germany and Britain though parts of France may stay wet.

In France, spring barley sowing has hardly advanced in the past month, while for earlier-sown wheat conditions are at their worst in four years, according to farm office FranceAgriMer.

A drying out of fields could lead French farmers to extend spring barley planting beyond the optimal window that ends in mid-March, while persisting wetness would lead them to transfer some area to later-sown maize and sunflower, Devillers said.

In Britain, parts of southern England experienced their wettest February on record.

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) late last year estimated Britain’s wheat area would fall three per cent this year and spring barley area would jump 11 per cent, but the agency is doing a follow-up survey to re-assess the impact of heavy rain.

However, rain in Europe has varied within countries, with some zones are benefiting from moisture after drought in the past two years, while mild temperatures have spared crops from frost damage, according to analysts.

“Overall, the spring sowing is going pretty well in Germany nationally, with problems concentrated in some northern regions,” one German analyst said.

Weak prices for maize could favour planting of other spring crops.

“For spring sowings in Germany I would expect increased plantings of spring wheat and malting barley,” the local analyst said.

In Poland, where wet conditions may delay slightly the start of spring planting in most regions, maize could also lose out, said Wojtek Sabaranski of analysts Sparks Polska.

“Due to a deep slide in maize prices this season, the area planted to maize this spring is likely to considerably decline, in favour of such grains as oats and barley, as the supply of these grains has been tight, and prices paid high,” he said.

Elsewhere, winter rain has proved beneficial for crops by easing drought in Spain, Romania and Bulgaria, though moisture levels remained low in the east of Romania and Bulgaria, Argus’ Devillers said.

–Reporting for Reuters by Gus Trompiz in Paris, Michael Hogan in Hamburg and Nigel Hunt in London.

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