Of course, there is a lot of folklore surrounding Thanksgiving Sunday in Bavaria: celebrations with harvest crowns, Thanksgiving altars in churches, pageants. And this despite the fact that most people in the Free State no longer have anything to do with agriculture. The days when there were dozens of farms in every village are over. The number of farms has been falling for decades. Example: According to the State Office for Statistics, the number of farms with cattle alone has fallen by 22.9 percent to 36,898 since 2016. However, the remaining farms grew - from an average of 67 to 73 animals.
Harvest Thanksgiving this Sunday (October 4th) is a “big thank you to our farmers and their families,” says Bavaria’s Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU). Because: “A full table often seems natural to us. But he isn't. Behind every loaf of bread, every glass of milk and every apple is nature, weather and, above all, people who put a lot of work and passion into ensuring that we have high-quality food every day.” That's exactly what Thanksgiving reminds you of.
The year in agriculture has so far been characterized by extreme heat and drought. “A mild, dry spring, followed by heat waves and a long dry phase, had a noticeable impact on the crops,” said the State Office for Statistics. How did things go in the individual divisions?
Cereals
The state office estimates this year's harvest volume at just 5.6 million tons, which is almost 13 percent less than in 2025. This makes this year one of the three worst for farmers in the past decades: only in 2024 and in the summer of 2003 were the harvests even lower, according to the state office.
Winter wheat was hit particularly hard; the harvest volume fell by almost a quarter compared to the previous year.
However, experts were satisfied with the quality of the bread grain - mainly wheat and rye are ground. The same applies to brewing barley.
Potatoes
The potato harvest was bad. Farmers in the Free State harvested around 1.2 million tons of potatoes, 36.2 percent less than the year before, as the State Office for Statistics announced.
Compared to the average for the years 2020 to 2025, the harvest volume also fell by 26.4 percent. In purely mathematical terms, every Bavarian could eat 91 kilograms of local potatoes every year.
At the end of August, the Bavarian Farmers' Association (BBV) had already pointed out that the extreme heat from the end of June had stopped the growth of the plants. Lack of water, the reed leafhopper, which transmits the plant diseases Stolbur and SBR, and a reduced cultivated area are further problems.
“Drought and high temperatures have put strain on stocks and are leading to below-average yields,” writes the ministry. After the record year of 2025 with high yields but very weak prices, the economic situation of many companies remains tense.
The state association of producer groups had recommended that companies reduce acreage in order to equalize supply and demand. According to the State Office for Agriculture (LfL), the potato area in the Free State fell by four percent to 37,378 hectares. Processing and table potatoes were affected.
The area under cultivation for starch potatoes, however, has increased. Starch is obtained from these potatoes, which is used for food production but also in industry.
Hops
Anyone driving on the A9 towards Munich cannot miss the Bavarian hops, as there are several fields lining the motorway. The hop growers expect a harvest below average, writes the ministry: "At the same time, falling beer sales and a continued oversupplied hop market are putting companies under economic pressure." However, the lower harvest volume could help “to bring supply and demand back into greater balance”.
The year 2026 has “unfortunately shown us once again that climate change can cause enormous, even existential, difficulties,” said the head of the Association of German Hop Growers, Adi Schapfl, at the end of August.
wine
The Franconian winegrowers have to be content with a meager yield this year - an average of 55 hectoliters per hectare. The year before it was 72 hectoliters, in 2024 it was around 57.
The ten-year average is 66.9 hectoliters. According to the Franconian Winegrowers Association, drought and extreme heat take their toll on the grapes - and this is also reflected in the harvest quantity. Prices are likely to remain stable despite all the challenges.
The area under wine cultivation in Franconia extends roughly from Bamberg to Aschaffenburg. In total, there is a productive vineyard area of around 5,800 hectares - 200 hectares fewer are planted than in the previous year (as of August 1, 2026).
fruit
The Ministry of Agriculture reported that the situation in fruit growing was mixed. For strawberries, for example, the harvest is probably below the previous year's volume. However, the result for sweet cherries was pleasing. Their harvest was already over when the dry and hot weather set in.
According to initial figures from the State Office for Statistics, the apple harvest is significantly lower than last year at around 22,000 tons. At that time, 33,172 tons were removed from the trees. Compared to the average for the years 2020 to 2025, there is a decrease of 30.9 percent.
The statistics experts registered around 2,700 tonnes of pears - that is 20.1 percent less than in 2025 and 42.6 percent less than the average for the years 2020 to 2025. The level of self-sufficiency for these two types of fruit is relatively low in the Free State: mathematically, only around 1.7 kilos of Bavarian apples and 200 grams of Bavarian pears can be eaten per person per year.
