During the crisis, consumers save money when shopping, among other things, by increasingly turning to conventional alternatives instead of organic products. Supply and demand are out of balance. Retail reacts.
In addition to energy, it is above all food that is driving inflation in Germany to the highest levels it has been in decades. Exploding feed and energy costs are making dairy products in particular more and more expensive. A rare exception, however, is organic milk. Aldi has reduced the price for a liter of organic whole milk by 24 cents from 1.69 to 1.45 euros. Other discounters and supermarkets are following suit. Since the prices for conventional milk products continue to rise at the same time, the usual price difference between organic and conventional milk has completely disappeared from some retailers.
Specialist media such as the "Lebensmittelzeitung" report that consumers are very reluctant to buy organic products in view of inflation and the loss of purchasing power. At the beginning of the summer, Aldi and Co. again increased the prices for organic milk - apparently too much. According to the "Lebensmittelzeitung", a large bottler of organic milk reports a drop in sales of 30 percent. The trade is now reacting to this.
While consumers are asking for conventional and less organic milk during the crisis, the supply is developing in the opposite direction. According to "Agrar heute", the delivery volume of conventional milk in Germany in July was one percent below the previous year's level, but organic milk was more than two percent higher.
Not only the consumer but also the producer prices of the two segments are converging strongly. For a liter of conventional milk, farmers received an average of 55 cents in July, as "Agrar heute" reports. That's 19 cents, or more than 50 percent, more than a year earlier. The producer price for a liter of organic milk, on the other hand, rose "only" by almost 8.5 cents from a good 49 cents to almost 58 cents. The price premium that farmers can ask for organic milk has thus shrunk from eleven to less than three cents.
