Are farmers exploited by supermarket chains?

Are supermarkets charging extortionate prices while farmers go bankrupt? It’s not quite that simple when you look at the details. The Deep Research breaks down which costs arise at each stage. It also gives a rough idea of what a doubling of fertilizer and fuel costs will mean.

My personal thoughts: If I wanted to become a farmer, I would either market directly, sign contracts, or specialize in crops that are not exposed to such extreme market fluctuations and that not everyone has. In any case, avoid putting everything on one card. In nature, monocultures are vulnerable. My experience with mixed-cropping: Every year there are crops that do well and others where there is little to no harvest. In the mass market, a good harvest usually means poor prices afterward.

📚 Deep Research — source text

Structural Analysis and Fact Check on Price Formation in the German Table Potato Market: Distribution of Value Creation Between Producers, Logistics, and the Grocery Retail Sector

Problem Statement and Socioeconomic Context of the Agricultural-Economic Debate

In the ongoing public and agricultural-policy debate over fair compensation for agricultural labor and pricing for essential foodstuffs, the German potato market plays a highly symbolic and at the same time exemplary role. The tension between primary producers on the one side and the highly concentrated grocery retail sector (LEH) on the other regularly erupts into emotionally charged discussions about the fair distribution of value creation. Especially in periods of cyclical market disruptions and inflationary trends at the consumer level, a narrative takes shape that is massively fueled by viral reports from farmers as well as media coverage: the claim is that agricultural producers receive only a marginal fraction of the final selling price for one kilogram of table potatoes—often put at just a few cents—while the same goods are sold to end consumers in the supermarket for many times that amount, in some cases up to 2.50 euros per kilogram.

This stark contrast between farm-gate prices, which are at times quoted at 3 cents per kilogram or even turn into negative returns, where the producer must pay extra for the disposal of the so-called "free goods," and the persistently high consumer prices raises fundamental questions about how the agricultural value chain works. The urgent question is which actors in this process act as the main beneficiaries and how the enormous margin differences can be justified and quantified through functional cost blocks such as processing, sorting, logistics, marketing, store-specific retail expenses, and government taxes.

This report provides an exhaustive, data-driven deconstruction and verification of this narrative. The aim is to analyze the micro- and macroeconomic mechanisms of price formation in the German potato sector in depth. It shows that the perceived discrepancy between producer and consumer prices cannot be reduced monocausally to isolated price gouging or "greed" by a single actor at the end of the supply chain. Rather, it is the complex result of a highly divided, cost-intensive value-creation architecture shaped by massive structural and technological transformations. The following investigation is based on aggregated market data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), detailed empirical surveys by the Thünen Institute, market balance sheets from Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (AMI), process-economic calculations by the Thuringian State Office for Agriculture and Rural Areas (TLLLR), and data from the EHI Retail Institute.

The German Potato Market in the Global and European Macro Context

In order to analytically understand price formation at the farm level, it is essential to place German potato production in the European and global commodity flows. In this specific segment, the German agricultural sector does not operate as an isolated domestic market, but is strongly integrated into international division of labor. Germany traditionally plays the role of a net exporter. The supply balance for the 2024/25 marketing year, which covers the period from July 2024 to June 2025 and is based on the 2024 harvest, illustrates this export strength impressively: in total, around 6.2 million tons of potatoes, both as fresh produce and in the form of highly processed products, were exported from Germany to the world market. This corresponds to an increase in exports of 3.6 percent compared with the previous marketing year. Imports amounted to 2.7 million tons, which also marked an increase of 5.4 percent, but did not endanger Germany’s massive net export position.

Production Volumes and Segmentation of Cultivation

The 2024 harvest season marks a significant historical milestone in German agricultural statistics. With a preliminarily estimated harvest volume of 12.677 million tons (compared with 11.607 million tons in 2023) on a massively expanded cultivated area of 289,300 hectares, preliminary estimate, domestic potato production reached a volume not documented on this scale since the year 2000. This expansion of ware potato cultivation was not purely a national development, but a Western European one, driven in large part by the lucrative price phases of previous years and by signals from the processing industry.

The sector is characterized by strong functional segmentation. Alongside the market for classic table potatoes, which go directly to consumers via grocery retail, processing potatoes (for example for the French fry and chip industries), seed potatoes for vegetative propagation, and starch potatoes dominate the agronomic portfolio. Starch potatoes, for instance, account for around 18 percent of total production and form an existential economic pillar for farms, especially in regions with light, sandy soils—such as Brandenburg. Without contractual security from the starch industry, the purely high-risk cultivation of table potatoes would not be economically viable for many of these farms.

Agronomic Challenges and Weather Effects in 2024/2025

Despite the impressive gross harvest volumes, the industry faces enormous quality challenges that directly affect price formation. Agricultural production is inherently dependent on climatic volatility. The year 2024 was marked by extreme and adverse weather events that massively disrupted the potato growing cycle. An exceptionally late, cold spring with persistent rainfall significantly delayed planting. These unfavorable conditions continued in the form of heavy rain throughout the main growing season.

These climatic stress factors led to an agronomic paradox: a historically large gross harvest stands against a severely compromised net yield. The share of marketable and storable produce has fallen drastically. The stocks showed significant quality defects, including a high percentage of rot, severe scab infestation, greened tubers, and physiological deformities such as hollow heart or atypical oversized tubers. For the economic reality of farmers, this discrepancy is of central importance, because goods that do not meet the strict visual and quality standards of grocery retail are subject to massive price discounts or are completely unsaleable as table potatoes. Dealing with these quality deficits creates enormous selling pressure that seriously disrupts market equilibrium.

The Reality of Producer Prices: Veracity of the “Few Cents” Claim

The key question at the center of this fact check—whether agricultural producers actually receive only a few cents for a kilogram of potatoes—must, in the context of the current market environment and the statistical data, be answered with an unequivocal yes. Price formation at the first stage of the value chain is relentlessly dictated by the interplay of supply pressure, quality deficiencies, and the market power of the buying side.

The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) recorded significant declines in producer prices for agricultural products in general and for crop products in particular in 2024 and the subsequent reporting periods. In specific reporting months, price drops of up to 17.4 percent compared with the same month of the previous year were measured. In the table potato market, the combination of above-average gross harvest volumes and problematic storability (due to the wet weather) culminated in enormous supply pressure. Farmers were forced to place critically affected lots on the market as quickly as possible in order to avoid looming total losses in storage.

The 2024 Price Collapse and “Free Goods”

This sales pressure hit a domestic table potato market that has been shaped for years by a gradual decline in demand, as consumer habits have shifted from fresh potatoes to more processed convenience products. The result of this market constellation was an unprecedented price collapse. Market data show that the producer price for table potatoes collapsed by around 42 percent since November 2024. Prices fell to a level of 8 to 15 euros per 100 kilograms, which corresponds exactly to 8 to 15 cents per kilogram. Such a low price level, ruinous for producers, was last observed in the crisis year 2021.

Even more dramatic is the revenue situation for farms that did not secure their production in advance through fixed contracts with retailers or the processing industry. In this so-called free market—for unbound “free goods”—price formation temporarily broke down completely. Agricultural field reports and market observations confirm payout prices of only 3 cents per kilogram in the deepest phases of the crisis. In extreme cases, when lots were rejected outright by retailers because of advancing rot or deviations from standards, the sign even reversed: prices became negative. This means that the farmer not only generated no revenue, but had to spend additional liquid funds to finance pickup and proper disposal of the biomass.

This situation was aggravated by a spillover effect from the processing sector. Dual-purpose varieties—potatoes approved both for fresh consumption and for French fry production—temporarily found no outlet in industry, because it had extremely high contract coverage and global frozen fry sales in the Western European core market (especially Belgium and the Netherlands) came under pressure. From January to September 2024, for example, 10 percent fewer fries left the Benelux region than in the record year 2022. These surplus processing potatoes additionally pushed onto the already over-supplied table market and acted as a major price depressant (the so-called “bear argument”).

Business-Economic Deep Dive: The Cost Architecture of Agricultural Production

To evaluate what a market return of 8 to 15 cents—or even 3 cents—per kilogram means for the economic survival and substance of a farm, a precise full-cost calculation is required. Looking at revenue alone falls short; it must be set in relation to the massive inputs and expenditures of primary production. An excellent and highly detailed data basis for this is provided by the management benchmarks for table potato production calculated by the Thuringian State Office for Agriculture and Rural Areas (TLLLR) for 2024.

These process-economic calculations are based on full-cost accounting and integrate expert knowledge as well as results from branch accounts of typical reference farms, enabling statewide trend statements about average intensity levels.

Discrepancy Between Field Yield and Marketable Produce

The TLLLR calculation first makes clear the fundamental difference between gross field yield and the actually monetizable marketable produce. At a standardized yield level of 300 decitons per hectare (dt/ha), the share of saleable marketable produce is only 80 percent (or 79.5%). The remaining 20 percent consists of non-marketable fractions: 18 percent (or 17.5%) are attributable to defects such as green, damaged, scabbed, or rotten tubers, and another 3 percent to undersized tubers that do not meet retail standards. In addition, there are admixtures of soil and stones amounting to 6 percent of the gross produce.

If the potato harvest is not sold directly “from the field,” but instead stored to achieve potentially better prices in the winter and spring months, further storage losses of 10 percent due to weight loss (tuber respiration losses) and subsequent rot must be factored in according to the benchmarks. Of the 30 tons per hectare harvested in the field, often only just under 24 tons remain that can actually generate revenue.

Detailed Cost Structure of Production

Against the potential revenue calculated as a five-year average—the TLLLR assumes long-term producer prices between 19.5 cents/kg (directly at harvest) and 21.0 cents/kg (after storage)—there are enormous production costs. Table potato production is among the most capital-, labor-, and input-intensive processes in all arable farming. The following table breaks down these costs precisely:

Table 1: Detailed full-cost calculation of table potato production in Germany. Own synthesis and presentation based on the TLLLR management benchmarks for the yield level of 300 dt/ha (as of July 2024).

The analysis of these expenses illustrates the immense financial upfront burden borne by agricultural producers. The procurement of healthy, certified seed potatoes alone requires investments of more than 1,100 euros per hectare. Chemical crop protection, which is indispensable especially in wet years like 2024 to prevent total losses from late blight and tuber blight (Phytophthora infestans), consumes another roughly 370 euros per hectare. Machine costs of at least 500 euros per hectare reflect the high diesel consumption (calculated at 1.37 euros/liter) for planting, repeated ridging, spraying, and the extremely traction-intensive harvesting of potatoes. Added to this are electricity costs for the energy-intensive ventilation and cooling of storage facilities, which is existentially important given variable harvest quality, but has become a huge financial burden for farms due to the general explosion in energy prices.

Breaking down the total costs of 6,231.05 euros per hectare determined by TLLLR against the theoretically attainable marketable yield of 239 dt/ha (23,900 kg) results in pure production full costs of around 26 cents per kilogram of saleable potatoes. Even if state area payments (basic income support of around 263 euros/ha) are subtracted, production costs still lie significantly above the current crisis market prices of 8 to 15 cents.

This economic imbalance confirms in dramatic fashion the warnings from farming practice: at the spot-market prices of the 2024/2025 season, farmers are not generating contribution margins, but rather realizing massive capital destruction. The farmer acts as a pure price taker; the market price is dictated by retailers, and unlike other economic actors, farmers have no mechanism to pass sharply risen input costs (for energy, fertilizer, wages, machinery) on to the end consumer. Without cross-subsidization from other branches of the business (such as more profitable arable crops or livestock farming) or long-standing mixed-cost calculations, this situation threatens existence.

Macroeconomic Transformation: The Shrinkage of the Producer Share in Historical Context

If the production costs at the primary stage are around 26 cents, but the farmer receives only 10 cents in times of crisis while the consumer in the supermarket pays 1.50 to 2.50 euros for loose produce or 1.99 to 7.99 euros for 5-kg packs, the question of where the enormous value-creation difference goes is unavoidable. To understand this discrepancy, the view must be widened from pure agricultural production to the entire downstream supply chain.

Long-term scientific studies by the Thünen Institute on the development of producer shares in consumer spending on food reveal a profound structural paradigm shift in the German agricultural and food sector. The data show that table potatoes—together with shell eggs—recorded by far the strongest decline in the agricultural share of the final sales revenue between 1970 and 2020.

In the early 1970s, the value chain was short and direct: farmers still received an average of 48 percent of total consumer spending on domestically produced food. In 2023, this sector-wide average was only 23 percent. For milk the share was still 36 percent, for meat 26 percent, while for highly processed products such as bread grain it had imploded to 4 percent. For table potatoes, the producer share today sits at the lower end of this spectrum, as confirmed by Thünen Institute data.

This dramatic decline in the “food euro” in favor of downstream stages is, however, according to the Thünen Institute, not primarily due to a singular, malicious exploitation of agriculture by cartels, but to the systematic “outsourcing of functions.” The process of supplying food has changed fundamentally. In the 1970s, potatoes were still sold to a large extent unwashed, covered in soil, packed in rough 50-kilogram jute sacks, directly from the farm or via simple regional distribution structures to end consumers for winter storage in cellars.

With rising economic growth, increasing urbanization, and a growing gross domestic product (GDP), however, consumer preferences changed radically. Modern consumers demand a convenience product: the potato must now be impeccably washed clean, precisely calibrated according to size and shape standards, separated by variety, packaged in small, visually appealing and often sustainable units (e.g. 1.5-kg nets or paper carrier bags), and available 365 days a year on the brightly lit supermarket shelf in consistent quality. The higher the degree of processing and the smaller the package size, the lower the percentage share of the primary agricultural raw product in the final price.

At the same time, strong labor-saving technical progress took hold at producer level. Rationalization measures, the use of large-scale machinery, and improved breeding led to falling relative production costs (inflation-adjusted), which was reflected in a long-term negative trend in producer prices. However, these efficiency gains in agriculture were not retained in the form of higher margins, but passed on through competition to the downstream stages and ultimately to consumers.

The Industrialized Intermediate Stage: Collection, Processing, and Logistics

The outsourcing of these functions has created a highly complex and extremely cost-intensive intermediate stage between field and supermarket shelf: processing and packing operations as well as food logistics. These actors absorb a significant share of the price difference.

1. Collection logistics and bulk transport: Immediately after harvest, the raw produce must be transported from the fields to central collection facilities. Potatoes have a high water content (around 78 percent), which means transporting a lot of “dead weight.” Logistics costs are massive for such bulk goods. Exploding diesel prices, higher truck tolls in Germany, and an acute shortage of professional drivers are driving freight costs per ton sharply upward.

2. High-tech washing and sorting processes: Machine-based processing is long since no longer a rudimentary process. Modern packing stations use highly complex optoelectronic sorting systems. Each individual potato is scanned from multiple angles by camera systems to detect scab, pressure marks, rot, or undesired discoloration (greening). Defective tubers are automatically blasted out of the product stream using compressed-air pulses. These systems not only require investments in the multi-million range, but also have enormous energy needs and must be continuously maintained.

3. Packaging intensity: The increasing fragmentation into micro-consumer units significantly raises the cost of the product. Material costs for printed films, nets, paper carrier bags, labels, and the application of barcodes and traceability systems have a noticeable impact on the price per kilogram.

4. Climate control and just-in-time distribution: To stop the physiological aging of the potato, maintain dormancy, and suppress skin diseases, the processed goods must be stored under strictly controlled, temperature- and humidity-regulated conditions. From the packing plants, deliveries are made precisely, often daily, to the grocery retail sector’s regional distribution centers.

In this context, the Thünen Institute emphatically stresses that in these modern food value chains, a broad spectrum of services also becomes massively more important. Administrative costs for accounting, IT infrastructure, quality management, certifications (e.g. QS, GlobalG.A.P.), marketing, and the use of temporary staffing agencies in the packing plants generate significant cost blocks that systematically eat away at the “food euro” on its way from farmer to consumer.

The Final Stage: Margins, Market Power, and Cost Structures in Supermarkets

At the end of this value chain stands grocery retail (LEH), which in Germany is characterized by a pronounced oligopolistic market structure. Four dominant retail groups control the overwhelming majority of the market. This concentration gives grocery retail immense bargaining and market power vis-à-vis the upstream stages (packers and indirectly farmers), which it uses to dictate procurement prices.

Asymmetric Price Transmission as a Profit Engine

A central economic phenomenon that determines price formation at the point of sale and has been empirically demonstrated by the Thünen Institute is asymmetric price transmission. This concept describes the fact that price changes at the producer stage are not passed on to end consumers to the same extent, not at the same speed, and not symmetrically in both directions.

When producer prices for potatoes fall sharply—as in the crisis autumn of 2024 by 42 percent to 8 to 15 cents per kilo—consumer prices in the supermarket react extremely sluggishly. Grocery retailers often keep shelf prices stable at a high level for months, for example at 1.99 euros or 2.50 euros per kilogram. In these phases, retailers use the low procurement costs to drastically expand their own gross margins. If, on the other hand, procurement costs rise suddenly due to crop failures and shortages, this price increase is usually passed on to consumers very quickly in order to protect the retailer’s own margins. This asymmetry is one of the main reasons why farmers suffer financial losses in times of crisis while supermarket prices remain high for consumers.

Retail Operating Costs

However, the high gross margin (trade margin) between the purchase price from the wholesaler or packer and the shelf price cannot be equated with the supermarket’s pure net profit. Grocery retail must cover immense operating costs with this margin. Studies by the EHI Retail Institute on labor costs in supermarkets demonstrate how cost-intensive brick-and-mortar retail is.

• Labor and floor-space intensity: Operating fruit and vegetable departments is extremely labor-intensive. Goods must be stocked fresh every day, presented attractively, and continuously checked for quality. Checkout logistics and the general provision of sales floor space in expensive locations generate massive costs in high-wage Germany.

• Store infrastructure and energy: Presenting goods in elaborately lit, air-conditioned, and hygienically impeccable sales areas generates high overheads. In particular, supermarket cold chains are a major cost factor in times of high energy prices.

• Food losses (shrinkage) and waste: A critical and often underestimated cost factor is food loss at retail level. A detailed study by the North Rhine-Westphalia State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection (LANUV) shows that significant quantities of fresh produce such as potatoes are lost between the shop counter and the consumer as shrinkage. Tubers that green in the supermarket shelf due to light exposure, begin to sprout, or are damaged by customer handling are no longer saleable and must be disposed of at the supermarket’s own expense. Retailers anticipate these losses and price them into the selling price of intact goods as a risk premium, which further increases the price per kilogram for consumers.

• Marketing and promotional business: Another part of the margin goes into weekly flyers, sales promotions, and elaborate discount campaigns through which grocery retail significantly steers consumer purchases in the fierce competition for market share.

Due to intense competition—especially driven by the strong position of discount chains in Germany—the absolute net margin (net profit after deducting all operating costs and taxes) of major food chains is relatively low by international comparison and, across the entire assortment, often only in the range of 1 to 3 percent of revenue. For fresh categories such as fruit, vegetables, and potatoes, however, the percentage retail margin is structurally set higher to absorb the high spoilage risk. In conclusion, the Thünen Institute confirms that retail margins in German grocery retail occupy a highly relevant and tendentially large financial dimension within the “food euro.”

Regulatory Factors: The Role of State Taxation

In the emotionally charged debate over the distribution of revenue between farmer and supermarket, one crucial actor is often completely overlooked: the state. In Germany, food for basic supply, and thus table potatoes as well, is subject to a reduced VAT rate of 7 percent. In contrast to the regular rate of 19 percent, this is intended to provide social relief for staple foods. Nevertheless, the fiscal share in the final price is considerable.

By way of illustration: if one looks at a realistic supermarket price of 2.00 euros for one kilogram of premium table potatoes, exactly 13.08 cents of that go directly to the treasury as sales tax. The remaining net price, which must be divided within the entire value chain between retail, logistics, processing, and the producer, amounts to 1.869 euros. If the primary farmer on the crisis spot market receives only 8 to 10 cents for this kilo of raw produce, the VAT paid to the state alone exceeds the farmer’s entire gross revenue from production. This economic relationship illustrates the extreme margin compression at the origin of the value chain.

Dynamics in the Organic Segment: The Organic Potato Market

A differentiated view is needed for the market for organically produced potatoes, which follows its own microeconomic rules. According to the “AMI Market Balance Organic Farming 2024,” the German organic market did grow in value terms in 2023, but this increase in turnover was almost entirely an illusion caused by inflation-related price increases and not by a real expansion in consumer demand by volume.

Overall economic uncertainty and noticeable general inflation forced consumers to adapt their purchasing behavior. In the organic segment, they increasingly shifted away from expensive natural food stores toward more price-aggressive discount stores and drugstores, and increasingly bought cheaper private-label organic products instead of the established, higher-priced association brands (such as Bioland or Demeter).

For agricultural producers and processors, this constellation created an extremely critical environment. While the agricultural land under organic farming in Germany grew by a further 4 percent in 2023, as politically desired, farms were confronted with massive simultaneous cost increases at all operating levels (energy, wages, machinery). Switching to organic production poses enormous financial risks for conventional potato growers under these conditions. The renunciation of chemical-synthetic fungicides and herbicides leads to significantly lower hectare yields in organic cultivation and requires far greater mechanical labor input (for example through mechanical hoeing and flame weeding for weed control).

To compensate for these lower yields and higher unit costs, significantly higher producer prices for organic potatoes are absolutely necessary. But if consumers move to the discount segment because of price sensitivity, the margins of organic farmers are caught in a toxic squeeze between rising production costs and stagnant willingness to pay. The organic segment therefore also confirms that a high shelf price does not automatically guarantee a viable and profitable situation for the farming business if the production cost structure and the market power of retail eat up the extra revenue.

Synthesis: Quantifying the Shares of the Consumer Euro

If one combines the empirical data from all value-creation stages, the percentage and monetary composition of the final consumer price for German table potatoes can be reconstructed in model form. The 2024 situation report of the German Farmers’ Association provides the macroeconomic framework: total consumer spending in Germany amounted to 2,166 billion euros, of which 14.2 percent (or 11.2 percent excluding stimulants) went to food and beverages. The share of agricultural sales revenues in this spending was 23 percent across the sector.

For the specific product of fresh table potatoes in retail, however, a far more drastic distribution can be derived, especially in phases of high supply pressure. Based on the analyses of the Thünen Institute on asymmetric price transmission, the TLLLR cost data, and the AMI quotations from the crisis years, the following picture emerges:

Table 2: Quantified modeling of the composition of the consumer price for 1 kg of table potatoes in phases of an oversupplied market. Own synthesis based on aggregated data.

This heuristic model provides the final proof of the agricultural claim made at the outset: in phases of an oversupplied market, exacerbated by agronomic quality defects, the producer share of the final price collapses to a range of just 5 to 10 percent. From these 10 to at most 20 cents of gross revenue per kilogram, the primary producer must cover all of his continuously rising hectare costs. As the TLLLR benchmarks show, the full production cost alone is around 26 cents per kilogram. The result is a structural deficit at producer level.

The general principle of agricultural economics is also confirmed here: the shorter the value chain and the lower the degree of outsourced processing, the more of the final price remains with the farmer. Direct farm-gate marketing, in which producers can achieve prices of 1.50 to 2.50 euros per kilogram in farm shops, internalizes the margins of processing and retail. However, because of limited sales volumes and high own sales effort, this form of marketing remains a niche market for the overwhelming majority of farmers and cannot substitute for mass delivery to grocery retail.

Conclusion and Final Remarks

The rigorous verification of the value chain and pricing mechanisms in the German potato market confirms the core message of viral agricultural protests as factually correct: farmers receive, especially in years with high harvest volumes and quality losses (such as the 2024/2025 season), de facto only very marginal amounts in the range of a few cents for one kilogram of potatoes. Verifiable payout prices of 8 to 15 cents per kilogram—and for “free goods” on the spot market sometimes only 3 cents or even negative returns—are a real manifestation of a drastic market failure from the producers’ perspective, because these revenues do not even begin to cover the exploding production costs for seed potatoes, diesel, crop protection, and wages.

At the same time, the populist, monocausal reduction of this complex problem to mere “greed” on the part of supermarkets falls short analytically. The glaring spread between producer prices in the low-cent range and consumer prices of sometimes more than 2.00 euros per kilogram is primarily the result of a profound macroeconomic transformation. Over the past decades, agriculture has outsourced essential value-adding functions such as long-term storage, machine-based optical defect detection, cleaning, and highly complex, small-scale packaging processes to downstream industries as part of labor division and specialization.

Together with the necessary retail margin of the branch- and labor-intensive grocery retail sector, which has to factor in high write-offs for spoilage, and the state value-added tax, these highly technologized processing and logistics stages absorb well over 80 to 90 percent of the final shelf price.

The undeniable market power of oligopolistic grocery retail is manifested less in exorbitant net profit margins than in the economic ability to transmit prices asymmetrically: price collapses at producer level are not passed on to end consumers by retailers. Instead, these phases are used to expand their own gross margins. The primary farmer acts at the very end of the food chain as a pure price taker and buffer. He bears the full agronomic, climatic, and technological risk of production, while his cost structures have reached a level that can no longer be refinanced through spot-market-driven low prices. Thus, the humble German potato illustrates in exemplary fashion a deep systemic and allocative imbalance in the architecture and power distribution of modern, industrialized food supply chains.

owl-pineapple-fktx.squarespace.com

Potato Prices 2024

Opens in a new window

youtube.com

‍ High food prices: Does the money reach the farmers? - YouTube

Opens in a new window

ageconsearch.umn.edu

Prices, Quantities and Margins: Cyclical and Structural Development in ...

Opens in a new window

landwirtschaft.de

What share of consumer spending on food reaches farmers? - Landwirtschaft.de

Opens in a new window

bmel-statistik.de

Potato supply in Germany - BMEL Statistics

Opens in a new window

bayerischerbauernverband.de

Challenges in the Potato Market 2024/25 - Bavarian Farmers’ Association

Opens in a new window

ami-informiert.de

AMI Market Charts

Opens in a new window

ami-informiert.de

Market Balance Potatoes 2024/25 - AMI-informiert.de

Opens in a new window

mleuv.brandenburg.de

What’s New in the Pommes Fritz File - Brandenburg Potato Stories, 2023 edition - MLEUV

Opens in a new window

destatis.de

Producer prices of agricultural products in July 2025: -0.3% compared with July 2024

Opens in a new window

destatis.de

Price index for agriculture and forestry - Federal Statistical Office

Opens in a new window

zdfheute.de

2025 potato harvest drives prices into the ground - ZDFheute

Opens in a new window

tlllr.de

Benchmarks for performance and costs of production of ...

Opens in a new window

dserver.bundestag.de

Printed matter 15/2457, 15th electoral term - German Bundestag

Opens in a new window

stmelf.bayern.de

Bavarian Agricultural Report

Opens in a new window

lksh.de

Potato prices - Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Agriculture

Opens in a new window

situationsbericht.de

1.3 Food – consumption and prices - Situation Report 25/26

Opens in a new window

lebensmittelpraxis.de

Despite a good harvest - potato prices in the supermarket remain high – Lebensmittelpraxis.de

Opens in a new window

ehi.org

Study: Labor Costs in Supermarkets (PDF) - EHI Retail Institute

Opens in a new window

lanuv.nrw.de

LANUV Specialist Report 85 - Land.NRW

Opens in a new window

gabot.de

AMI: The new AMI Market Balance Organic Farming 2024 - Gabot.de