In southern Germany, a gradual cultural change has been taking place for decades: the beet ghosts are disappearing, and Halloween pumpkins are taking their place.

Why actually?

Don't the fodder beets, one more crooked than the other, many with funny growths that can be rededicated to the nose, for example, go better with Germany, yes with the people themselves, than the pumpkins, which often look like a painting?

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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Definitive.

And yet the trend seems unstoppable.

An inquiry to the Bavarian Farmers' Association not only revealed that in the Free State in 2021 only 312 hectares of fodder beets were cultivated, but also that the pumpkin population is significantly larger: giant pumpkins were harvested on 639 hectares in 2021, plus 997 hectares of garden pumpkin land;

So it's no wonder that every invitation to dinner was preceded by pumpkin soup.

The situation for the fodder beet is meanwhile so precarious that the farmers' association no longer even had a person responsible for it.

The FAZ inquiry therefore had to be processed by the consultant for potatoes and sugar.

Has the American way of life also driven out the turnip?

Is the American way of life also to blame for this?

The speaker had other explanations.

They go in the direction of human laziness, turned positive: labor economics.

Pumpkins are easier to hollow out than beets.

Above all, however, there have long been attractive alternatives to beet as feed.

Whereas the cows used to eat a lot of hay that had to be spiced up with something fresh, like fodder beets, corn now does both.

Its advantage: it can be harvested more mechanically and therefore more effortlessly than fodder beets and, as silage, is easier and longer to store.

However, there are people who, for the sake of tradition, defy the urge to rationalize.

One of them is Ludolf Karletshofer, a 76-year-old original from Messhofen, a district of Roggenburg in the Neu-Ulm district.

The committed local curator, who used to run a farm with eight to ten dairy cows, said the beet spirits came from the time when day laborers made soup from the inside of the beet and then sent their children to beg with the beet spirit illuminated by a tallow candle.

He also said: "The fodder beets are dying out because they are too much work."

Nevertheless - and although he and his wife have back problems - in 2021 he also grew about 300 fodder beets in a small field in his 2000 square meter garden behind the house, which he gives to the children free of charge.

Because of Corona, however, the beet ghost parade, which has been taking place for decades, had to be canceled last year.

Only the stable bunnies in the area were happy about this, as they got more beets than usual.

This text was first published on 10/30/2021.