Why butter and cream might run out in France

Are we going to run out of butter and cream soon? After the historic drought that affected France this summer, the presence of dairy products could be more sparse on supermarket shelves. Because, in the meadows, the grass is no longer green: the pastures have suffered from the dry spring and then from successive episodes of heat wave. Dairy cow breeders no longer have enough grass to feed their animals, forcing them to dip into the fodder stocks provided for winter weather or to buy feed. Added to the summer drought is the surge in production costs. Already the price of animal feed, necessary to supplement the lack of fodder, but also fertilizers to grow fodder crops and fuel to run agricultural machinery. The price of milk is also rising, but not enough to allow farmers to offset the high production costs – calls to raise the selling price of milk to 1 euro per liter in supermarkets have multiplied since the start of the year. Faced with this difficult equation to solve, some ...