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‘We risk a shortage’: Oktoberfest cancellation deals fresh blow to German beer industry

Bavaria on Tuesday cancelled the iconic Oktoberfest for the first time since World War II dealing a fresh blow to Germany's beer industry already hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

'We risk a shortage': Oktoberfest cancellation deals fresh blow to German beer industry
Raising a glass to Oktoberfest during the festival in 2019. Photo: DPA

The event, which takes place annually from late September to October, was expected to draw six million visitors, but it would be too dangerous “as long as there is no vaccine”, Bavaria state premier Markus Soeder said.

Even with masks and social distancing, the threat of contagion was too high.

“Living with the coronavirus means living carefully,” he said.

This year marks the first time that Germany will have to do without the festival since the last world war.

But Oktoberfest has previously fallen victim to other epidemics – cholera kept the beer tents empty in 1854 and 1873.

READ ALSO: Oktoberfest 2020 cancelled over coronavirus pandemic

National identity

From hops growers to breweries, the German beer industry had already been staring at a morose season.

But the Oktoberfest cancellation was a further devastating blow with an impact stretching beyond the festival to the gastronomy and hospitality sectors.

Adolf Schapfl, 58, owns a farm of about 80 hectares in Hallertau, the small Bavarian region where 90 percent of Germany's hops are grown.

Crouching down on the soft earth of his hop field, Schapfl surveyed the plants emerging from the ground with a mixture of pride and anxiety.  

READ ALSO:

Mid-April is usually the time when the plants would be tied to splints, he explained, so they grow to several metres tall by August harvest time.

“This year, I don't have the manpower for it,” he said.

More than a thousand hop growers in Hallertau are still waiting for seasonal workers to arrive from Poland and Romania.

With European borders closed to limit the spread of the coronavirus, many of the workers are stuck at home.

Schapfl, who is also president of the Association of German Hop Growers, would normally have around 20 Polish workers on his farm at this time of year. Right now, there are four.

The region as a whole needs about 10,000.

Beer shortage

“I don't want to be dramatic, but without a harvest, the risk for us is bankruptcy, and for Germany, a beer shortage next year,” Schapfl said.

Germans drank an average of 102 litres of beer each in 2018 – in Europe, only  Austrians and Czechs drink more.

Angela Merkel tucking into a beer at a CSU event in 2017. Photo: DPA

The sector is in discussions with the government, which has already permitted other seasonal harvest workers to be flown into Germany on special charter flights.

An online portal has also been launched for Germans who wish to apply to work in the fields. “It's difficult work, but I hope it works,” Schapfl said.

In the meantime, his three grown-up children have been lending a hand on the farm.

READ ALSO: Bavaria – How Germany's worst-hit state is emerging from coronavirus lockdown

Breweries in trouble

A few kilometres from Schapfl's farm, at the other end of the production chain, brewer Andreas Weber, 25, has different reasons to be worried.

With restaurants and bars closed and all this summer's festivals cancelled, the young beer connoisseur employed by the Urban Chestnut Hallertau Brewery said demand for artisan beers is falling through the floor.

“We are not the worst affected because only 10 or 15 percent of our production goes into gastronomy. But if this goes on for several more months, it's going to get complicated,” he said.

In the room where the hops ferment in huge metal vats, nothing seems to have changed.

“Don't worry, we are still producing,” Weber smiles, picking out a glass to taste his beer straight from the source.

However, the drop in production has forced the brewery to cut its three employees' working hours – like in many of Germany's 1,600 breweries.

Member comments

  1. I´m interested in how much these seasonal workers who are now deemed so important, actually get paid.
    I imagine they are housed in a type of barracks, no mention is ever made of the wages they receive.

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COVID-19

Is the pandemic over in Germany?

As much of Germany lifts - or prepares to lift - the last remaining Covid-19 measures, intensive care units say Covid-19 admissions are no longer straining the system.

Is the pandemic over in Germany?

Despite a difficult winter of respiratory illnesses, intensive care units in Germany say Covid-19 admissions have almost halved. The number of cases having to be treated in the ICU has gone down to 800 from 1,500 at the beginning of this month.

“Corona is no longer a problem in intensive care units,” Gernot Marx, Vice President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, told the German Editorial Network. “A the moment, we don’t have to think every day about how to still ensure the care of patients, but how to actually run a service that can help.”

Marx said the drop has allowed them to catch up on many postponed surgeries.

The number of sick employees in hospitals is also falling, helping to relieve the pressure on personnel.

The easing pressure on hospitals correlates with the assessment of prominent virologist and head of the Virology department at Berlin’s Charite – Christian Drosten – who said in December that the pandemic was close to ending, with the winter wave being an endemic one.

German federal and state governments are now in the midst of lifting the last of the country’s pandemic-related restrictions. Free Covid-19 antigen tests for most people, with exceptions for medical personnel, recently ended.

READ ALSO: Free Covid-19 tests end in Germany

Six federal states – Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Thuringia, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein – have ended mandatory isolation periods for people who test positive for Covid-19.

Bavaria, Saxony-Anhalt, and Schleswig-Holstein have ended the requirement to wear FFP2 masks on public transport, while Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will follow suit on February 2nd.

At that time, the federal government will also drop its requirement for masks to be worn on long-distance trains. Labour Minister Hubertus Heil says that’s when he also intends to exempt workplaces – apart from medical locations – from a mask requirement.

READ ALSO: Germany to drop mask mandate in trains and buses from February 2nd

Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will also end the requirement for patients to wear a mask in doctor’s offices. That’s a requirement that, so far, will stay in place everywhere else. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has also said that he thinks this requirement should remain. 

But some public health insurers and general practitioners are calling for a nationwide end to the obligation for wearing masks in doctor’s offices.

“The pandemic situation is over,” National Association of Statutory Health Physicians (KBV) Chair Andreas Gassen told the RND network. “High-risk patients aren’t treated in all practices. It should generally be left up to medical colleagues to decide whether they want to require masks in their practices.”

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