Butterberg

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Butter stored in 50 kg barrels

The Butterberg is a name for the constant overproduction of butter in Western Europe from the late 1970s to 2007 due to government interventions .

causes

Due to the lower of production agricultural farms in the 1950s -Jahren was a subsidy policy launched, which enabled the farmers to sell the most products to state-guaranteed purchase prices, making it at that time, especially in milk to de facto fixed prices came, the little fluctuated around the respective intervention price. Because of this incentive, the production of grain , cattle, milk and dairy products such as butter, etc., skyrocketed until production exceeded demand in the late 1970s. As a countermeasure, the milk quota was introduced in 1984 .

In the following decades, much more was produced than needed. Thus, the price of goods on the market fell and the state bought more and more surplus goods, which were then stored - the so-called butter mountain. Other names for the same phenomenon are the milk lake or milk glut for the overproduction of milk and the mountains of meat .

Christmas butter

In order to reduce stocks, the so-called Christmas butter was sold in the Federal Republic of Germany for several years, most recently in 1985 in December. This was done on the instructions of the Federal Ministry of Food . The butter was initially offered (e.g. 1979) at 50 pfennigs, later by 70 pfennigs, per 250 grams cheaper. This should keep the price below the 2 DM threshold. The fee was limited to four packages per family. The 250 gram packets were labeled "Dairy butter from intervention stocks". Intervention stocks are stocks created by the state-guaranteed purchase of agricultural products. The Christmas butter sales contributed less than planned to the mining of the butter mountain.

2007: End of Butterberg and Milchsee

In 2003, there were 194,000 tonnes of skimmed milk powder and 223,000 tonnes of butter in the EU intervention camps. In 2007 it was reported that stocks were completely depleted due to increased demand .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerold Büchner: Out for Subsidy Biotope Das Parlament, Edition 12/2007.
  2. ↑ AGRICULTURAL MARKET: Everything in butter . In: Der Spiegel , September 10, 1979. Retrieved September 15, 2017. 
  3. ↑ Philip Banse: The milk lake has dried up Deutschlandfunk, May 29, 2007.
  4. ↑ Steffen Fründt: Why milk is suddenly becoming scarce and expensive Welt online, May 6, 2007.