Can market fragmentation explain the limited success of political attempts to promote grain legume cultivation in Germany?

Franziska Mittag () and Sebastian Hess
Additional contact information
Franziska Mittag: University of Hohenheim
Sebastian Hess: University of Hohenheim

Agricultural and Food Economics, 2025, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-33

Abstract: Abstract Grain legumes, such as field peas, field beans, sweet lupins and soybeans, are known to increase biodiversity within the appropriate crop rotation and are an important source of import-substituting feed protein. National and regional policy schemes have long tried to support the cultivation of grain legumes. Although many regions in Germany offer favourable conditions for grain legumes, previous subsidy schemes have failed to increase the area under cultivation and farmers report a lack of market incentives. Indeed, the available price data exhibit a substantial share of non-random missing values in weeks when grain legumes were not traded. We analyse these non-price periods using cointegration tests and single-hurdle Tobit models. The results indicate that regional price formation for grain legumes in German regions depends not only on a minimum quantity of the respective legume crop in supply but also on a favourable supra-regional soybean price: Regional grain legume markets are not integrated and show evidence of a fragmented market structure. This may explain why local grain legume value chains have failed to emerge in Germany, despite decades of policy attempts to support these crops.

Keywords: Grain Legumes; Market Fragmentation; Cointegration Analysis; Hurdle Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q02 Q11 Q13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40100-025-00408-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agfoec:v:13:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1186_s40100-025-00408-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nomics/journal/40100

DOI: 10.1186/s40100-025-00408-z

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural and Food Economics is currently edited by Alessandro Banterle, Liesbeth Dries, Andrea Marchini and Carlo Russo

More articles in Agricultural and Food Economics from Springer, Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().