Agriculture and Industry : Germany

Until 1950, agriculture was the principal economic sector in Bavaria. Over the following decades this primarily agrarian state has come to be a modern industrial and service center. However, in large parts of Bavaria - not only in the Alpine foreland - farming and forestry still play a key role. Bavarian beer (brewed according to the purity regulations of 1516) is world-famous; the hops used in its production are grown in Bavaria itself, Franconian wine is likewise prized by connoisseurs. Today approximately 37 percent of the state’s gross domestic product stems from production industries and well over half from the service sector.

The twin cities of Nuremberg (492,000 inhabitants) and Furth (108,000), linked by Germany’s first railway line in 1835, form an industrial center focusing on electrical, mechanical and vehicle engineering, the printing trade and the plastics, toy and food industries. Regensburg (126,000 inhabitants), which has a well-preserved medieval townscape (the Stone Bridge dates from 1146), today lives from automobile manufacturing and the textile, machinery and wood industries. It also has an efficient Danube port. Ingolstadt (112,000 inhabitants) is the site of automobile manufacturing and oil refineries. Wurzburg (127,000 inhabitants) boasts not only printing press, electronics and food industries but also the state’s three largest wine-growing estates. Ineastern Bavaria, glassworks and porcelain manufactories carry on traditional crafts. International trade fairs such as “bauma” in Munich and the Toy Fair in Nuremberg are famous the world over.