In 2025, German growers harvested a total of 45,700 tonnes of berries from orchards covering roughly 9,000 hectares. While the cultivated area fell by 2.0 % compared with the previous year, the yield rose 23.5 %, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on Tuesday.
The improvement was partly due to more favorable weather in 2025, which set the crop back against the late‑freeze and drought‑heavy year of 2024. Compared with the six‑year average, total berry production increased by 13.3 %. Because of this rise, the record yield of 45,600 tonnes set in 2021 has been surpassed.
The most important berry crop remain the cultivated blueberries (Kulturheide [heidelbeeren]). In 2025 they occupied 3,450 hectares-down 1.4 % on the 2024 level-and accounted for about 38 % of both total area and yield. Blueberries produced 17,300 tonnes, a 14.4 % increase over 2024.
Following blueberries, the berries with the highest yields were red and white currants, which together yielded 9,300 tonnes, a 37.3 % jump. Raspberries produced 6,200 tonnes, down 11.1 %, while black currants reached 5,900 tonnes-a remarkable 107.4 % gain.
In 2025 greenhouses and other high‑covered structures extended their total area by 2.6 % to 590 hectares. Yet the yield from these protected areas dropped 2.8 % to just under 6,500 tonnes. Raspberries dominated the protected acreage, commanding 77.4 % of the cultivated area. Since the start of the data collection in 2012, the protected area for raspberries has not seen further growth, standing at 450 hectares, essentially unchanged from 2024.
Nearly one third (32.2 %) of all berry‑planting land-about 2,900 hectares-was managed as fully organic in 2025, according to Destatis. These farms produced 6,000 tonnes, representing 13.0 % of the total crop. Organic acreage declined slightly by 2.6 % from the previous year, yet the yield rose 43.5 % from the poor 2024 harvest.
Compared with the six‑year average, organic berry production grew 25.4 %. The only year with a higher organic output was 2021, at 7,100 tonnes. Within organic cultivation, the most prominent species remained the Aronia (chokeberry) with 870 hectares, followed by blueberries (590 hectares) and sea buckthorn (480 hectares). Blueberries yielded approximately 1,800 tonnes, up 15.6 % from 2024, while Aronia followed with roughly 1,500 tonnes, a leap of 194.8 %.
